Howdy,
Lately, I’ve made some excellent progress on improving my novel’s synopsis. No secret. Just revise, revise, and revise some more. It’s almost ready to send out again. Not quite, but almost.
I’ve been slogging through crisping up the query letter too. I did find a bit of useful advice about query letters on agent Eric Smith’s website. He has posted several successful query letters from authors he represents. Anyway, these queries are well worth reading and studying. This one, in particular, helped me improve my letter. My query is still far from perfect, but it’s better than it was.
On a more positive note, I’m feeling really good about the first 5,000 words of my novel. As anyone querying lately knows, most agents and independent publishers require the first 5,000 words along with the query. After much tweaking, I feel like these words are solid. Of course, editing these has led me to revise the entire work yet again. Which as it turns out is a good thing. As I’ve mentioned before, I recently realized the dialogue needed sharpening, especially in the later chapters. That’s what I’m working on right now, tinkering and deleting and hoping for the best.