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Can an AI write a query letter that lands an agent? We conducted a deep-dive experiment using Sudowrite to generate an AI query letter. See the results.
The blinking cursor on a blank page is an author’s oldest nemesis, but it’s never more terrifying than when that page is titled Query_Letter_Final_FINAL.docx. One of the most dreaded steps of writing a book isn’t the writing itself; it’s the 300-word sales pitch you have to craft to convince a literary agent your manuscript is the next bestseller. It’s a high-stakes document where every word counts. Enter the age of artificial intelligence, promising to streamline our most tedious tasks. But can it really tackle something as nuanced and personal as a query letter? We were skeptical, too. That’s why we decided to put it to the test. This isn't just a theoretical discussion; we rolled up our sleeves and used Sudowrite, a popular AI writing assistant, to generate a complete ai query letter. The question is: can an algorithm capture the heart of a story and the voice of its author, or will it just produce a soulless, generic template? Let's find out.
The Anatomy of a Killer Query Letter: Our Control Group
Before we unleash the AI, we need a baseline. What makes a query letter work? Trust me when I say, agents have seen it all, and they can spot a formulaic, uninspired letter from a mile away. A successful query letter isn't just a summary; it's a strategic piece of marketing. According to publishing experts like Jane Friedman, a query letter must accomplish several key things in a very short space. It’s a delicate balance of professionalism and passion.
Here are the non-negotiable components we'll be judging our ai query letter against:
1. The Personalization and Hook
You’ve got one chance to make an impression with that first sentence. The hook needs to be killer. It should grab the agent by the collar and refuse to let go. This is often a pithy, one-sentence pitch that encapsulates the core conflict and stakes of your novel. Equally important is personalization. Addressing the agent by name is the bare minimum. A truly great query shows you’ve done your homework. Why this agent? Mentioning a client of theirs you admire or a book on their list that shares thematic DNA with yours shows you’re a serious professional, not just spamming every agent in a directory. As one agent notes on the Nelson Literary Agency blog, personalization demonstrates genuine interest and industry awareness.
2. The Meat: The Synopsis (Without the Spoilers)
This is where so many writers get bogged down. You have to distill your 80,000-word masterpiece into about 150-200 words. Brutal. The goal isn't to recount every plot point. Instead, you need to introduce your protagonist, establish their goal, present the central conflict (the inciting incident), and raise the stakes. What choices must they make? What terrible things will happen if they fail? You want to leave the agent wanting more, not feeling like they’ve already read the book. A study on narrative engagement from Frontiers in Psychology highlights how creating suspense by withholding resolution is key to capturing interest. Your mini-synopsis should end on a cliffhanger or a compelling question that only reading the manuscript can answer.
3. The Housekeeping: Metadata and Comps
This is the nuts-and-bolts section. You need to clearly state your manuscript’s title, genre, and word count. This is crucial information that helps an agent immediately categorize your book and see if it fits their list. Then come the comparative titles, or “comps.” These are two recent (usually within the last 3-5 years) and successful books that your manuscript could sit next to on a bookshelf. Comps are marketing shorthand. They tell the agent, “If you liked Gideon the Ninth meets The Hunger Games, you’ll love my book.” Choosing good comps is an art form in itself, as explained by Writer's Digest, and shows you understand your target market.
4. The Closer: The Author Bio
Finally, you need to briefly introduce yourself. This isn't the place for your life story. Keep it short, sweet, and relevant. If you have any writing credentials (MFA, previous publications, contest wins), mention them here. If your profession gives you unique expertise relevant to your book’s subject matter (e.g., you’re a forensic scientist writing a crime thriller), include that. If you don't have any of that, that's okay! A simple, professional closing sentence is all you need. The bio is about demonstrating professionalism, not proving you're the next Hemingway. The key is confidence and brevity.
The Experiment: Crafting an AI Query Letter with Sudowrite
Alright, the stage is set. We have our rubric. Now, let's see if an AI can follow the rules. For this experiment, we invented a book premise:
Title: The Last Alchemist of Astra Genre: YA Fantasy Word Count: 85,000 words Premise: In a city powered by dwindling magical crystals, a 17-year-old apprentice alchemist named Elara discovers her late mother was part of a secret society trying to create a new energy source. When the city’s tyrannical ruler learns of her mother's research, he kidnaps her younger brother to force her to complete the work. Elara must use her forbidden alchemy skills to infiltrate the ruler’s sky-citadel and rescue her brother before the city—and her family—are destroyed.
Our mission: use Sudowrite’s features to build a complete ai query letter from this premise. Let’s be honest, I was expecting a bit of a mess. Here’s how it went.
Step 1: Brainstorming the Hook with 'Brainstorm'
First, we tackled the hook. A great hook is everything. I fed the premise into Sudowrite’s ‘Brainstorm’ feature and asked for “loglines” and “query letter opening hooks.” After a few seconds, it spat out a dozen options. Some were duds. Seriously. But a few had potential.
Here are a couple of the better outputs:
- "For 17-year-old Elara, alchemy isn't just a craft; it's a death sentence. But when a tyrant kidnaps her brother to harness her forbidden power, she must risk execution to save him and expose the lie at the heart of her dying city."
- "In a city where magic is fading and hope is a luxury, Elara's only inheritance from her mother is a book of forbidden alchemy. Now, that dangerous legacy is the only thing that can save her family from a ruler who would see the world burn to control it."
Not bad! The first one is punchy and establishes the stakes immediately. The second is more atmospheric. This is a perfect example of how an ai query letter tool can be a fantastic starting point. It's not about copy-pasting; it's about generating ideas you can refine. Harvard Business Review calls this “idea augmentation,” where AI serves as a creative partner.
Step 2: Generating the Synopsis with 'Write'
Next, the dreaded synopsis. I pasted our premise and the chosen hook into a document and used Sudowrite’s ‘Write’ feature, prompting it to “continue this query letter by writing a short, compelling plot summary.” The key here is guiding the AI. The quality of your input directly affects the output, a principle well-documented in AI research from institutions like Stanford's Human-Centered AI Institute.
Here’s a slightly condensed version of what it produced:
Seventeen-year-old Elara has spent her life in the shadow of the great magical crystals that power Astra, watching them dim day by day. Her only connection to her late mother is a hidden journal filled with cryptic alchemical formulas—a magic declared heresy by the city’s iron-fisted ruler, Magnus. When Magnus’s guards shatter her quiet life by abducting her younger brother, Leo, she learns the terrifying truth: Magnus believes Elara holds the key to completing her mother’s research into a new, volatile power source. He gives her an ultimatum: recreate the formula, or never see Leo again. Armed with only her mother’s dangerous knowledge and a desperate plan, Elara must navigate the treacherous politics of the elite and infiltrate Magnus’s heavily guarded sky-citadel. But the formula requires a sacrifice she may not be willing to make, and she soon discovers that the true cost of saving her city might be its utter destruction.
Okay, I have to admit, I was impressed. It correctly identified the protagonist, goal, conflict, and stakes. It even added some compelling details like the “iron-fisted ruler” and the “sky-citadel.” It’s a solid first draft. It definitely needs a human touch to inject more of the author’s unique voice, but as a foundation, it’s remarkably strong.
Step 3: Finding Comps with 'Brainstorm'
Finding good comps can take hours of research. Could AI speed this up? I used ‘Brainstorm’ again, asking for “comparative titles for a YA fantasy novel about a young alchemist fighting a tyrant in a dying magical city.”
The AI suggested:
- Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
- An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir
- The Cruel Prince by Holly Black
- Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson
This is an excellent list. These are all popular, recent YA fantasies with similar themes of rebellion, forbidden magic, and high-stakes conflict. An author would still need to verify these and choose the two that fit best, but as a research tool, this saved a ton of time. Tools like this are becoming indispensable for market research, a trend noted by McKinsey's 2023 State of AI report.
The Verdict: A Human Editor's Analysis of the AI Query Letter
So, we have the pieces. Let's assemble our AI-generated query letter and put it under the microscope. We’ll combine the best hook, the synopsis, the comps, and add a generic bio.
Dear [Agent Name],
For 17-year-old Elara, alchemy isn't just a craft; it's a death sentence. But when a tyrant kidnaps her brother to harness her forbidden power, she must risk execution to save him and expose the lie at the heart of her dying city.
Seventeen-year-old Elara has spent her life in the shadow of the great magical crystals that power Astra, watching them dim day by day. Her only connection to her late mother is a hidden journal filled with cryptic alchemical formulas—a magic declared heresy by the city’s iron-fisted ruler, Magnus. When Magnus’s guards shatter her quiet life by abducting her younger brother, Leo, she learns the terrifying truth: Magnus believes Elara holds the key to completing her mother’s research into a new, volatile power source. He gives her an ultimatum: recreate the formula, or never see Leo again. Armed with only her mother’s dangerous knowledge and a desperate plan, Elara must navigate the treacherous politics of the elite and infiltrate Magnus’s heavily guarded sky-citadel. But the formula requires a sacrifice she may not be willing to make, and she soon discovers that the true cost of saving her city might be its utter destruction.
THE LAST ALCHEMIST OF ASTRA is an 85,000-word YA fantasy complete at 85,000 words that will appeal to fans of Leigh Bardugo's SHADOW AND BONE and Sabaa Tahir's AN EMBER IN THE ASHES.
I am a writer based in [City, State]. Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely, [Author Name]
So, how does it stack up? Here’s the good, the bad, and the ugly.
What the AI Query Letter Got Right:
- Structure: Flawless. It followed the classic query letter structure perfectly: hook, synopsis, metadata, bio. It didn't ramble or get sidetracked. This structural competence is a known strength of large language models, as they are trained on vast datasets of structured text.
- Clarity and Conciseness: The synopsis is clear, punchy, and gets straight to the point. It avoids the common writer pitfall of trying to cram in too many subplots or characters. It understood the assignment: sell the core conflict.
- Market Awareness: The comps it generated were spot-on. This shows the AI has a solid grasp of genre conventions and the current market landscape, which is a huge asset.
Where the AI Query Letter Fell Short:
- Lack of Voice: This is the big one. The letter is competent, but it’s… generic. It lacks a unique authorial voice. It reads like a very good book report, not a passionate plea from a creator. The prose is clean but has no flavor, no spark. That spark is what agents are looking for—a sign that the manuscript itself will be compelling. Publishing consultant Jane Friedman consistently emphasizes that voice is often the deciding factor for an agent.
- Zero Personalization: The AI cannot know why you're querying a specific agent. It can't browse their Twitter feed, read their manuscript wish list (#MSWL), or authentically praise a book they represent. That first paragraph, the one that says, “I chose you for a reason,” is impossible for an AI to write sincerely. This human element is critical for building a connection, a point echoed by countless agents in industry interviews available through resources like QueryTracker.
- The 'Sacrifice' Cliché: The line, “But the formula requires a sacrifice she may not be willing to make,” is a well-worn trope. A human writer might dig deeper for a more specific, intriguing final sentence. AI often defaults to common patterns it has learned from its training data, which can lead to clichés, an observation supported by research on AI and creativity from Cornell University.
The Verdict: Can an AI write a query letter? Yes. It can write a technically correct one. But can it write a great one? Not on its own. The generated letter is a solid B-. It would likely get read, but it might not be compelling enough to get that coveted manuscript request. It’s missing the soul.
Best Practices: Using AI as Your Querying Co-Pilot, Not Your Ghostwriter
Okay, so you shouldn't just hand the keys over to an AI and expect it to drive you to a book deal. Here's the thing: that doesn't mean an ai query letter tool is useless. Far from it. The trick is to reframe your relationship with the technology. It’s not a replacement for your brain; it’s a powerful assistant.
Think of it less as an author and more as an incredibly fast, well-read intern. Here’s how to use it effectively.
1. Use it for Ideation and Angle-Finding
Writer's block is real, especially when you’re trying to find the perfect hook. Use AI to break the logjam.
- Brainstorm a dozen hooks. Don't accept the first one. Generate many and look for patterns or phrases that spark an idea. Maybe one gives you a new verb, and another frames the stakes in a way you hadn't considered. Mix and match.
- Explore different angles for your synopsis. Ask it to write the summary from the villain's point of view, or to focus only on the romantic subplot. This can help you see your story in a new light and find the most compelling narrative thread for your pitch. This aligns with findings from MIT Sloan Management, which suggest that AI is most effective when used to explore a wide range of possibilities.
2. Use it to Tighten and Refine Your Prose
Once you have a draft written in your own voice, use AI as an editor.
- Paste your synopsis into a tool like Sudowrite and use its 'Rewrite' feature. Ask it to make the paragraph “more concise” or “more suspenseful.” This can help you trim fat and punch up your language. You don't have to accept its suggestions, but they can highlight weak spots in your own writing.
- Check for clarity. Ask the AI to summarize your summary in one sentence. If its summary is way off base, it’s a sign that your paragraph isn't as clear as you think it is. It's an instant feedback loop that, unlike beta readers, has no feelings to hurt. For a deeper dive on this, check out our article, The Power of Premise: How to Start with a Strong Story Idea.
3. Use it for Market Research
As we saw in the experiment, AI is fantastic at identifying comp titles. This is a legitimate time-saver.
- Generate lists of comps. Give it your premise, genre, and themes, and let it build a reading list for you. But always do your due diligence. Read the blurbs, check the reviews, and make sure the comps are a genuine fit before you put them in your letter. According to a Pew Research Center report, while AI adoption is growing, experts still stress the need for human oversight and verification.
4. The Human Element is Non-Negotiable
Finally, and this is so, so, so important: the final draft must be yours. The personalization for the agent must be written by you. The voice of the query must reflect the voice of your manuscript. An agent falls in love with a voice, not a plot summary. After you’ve used the AI for all its strengths, your last step is to do a full pass-through where you inject yourself back into the letter. Rewrite sentences to sound like you. Ensure the tone matches your book. This is the step that turns a B- query into an A+.
Bottom line: Use AI to build the chassis, but you have to be the one to drive it.