The WIP Report: Comps
- Dan
- 3 minutes ago
- 2 min read
Another missive from the edges of sanity—it's WIP Report time! Recently, I had a eureka moment and wrote a reasonably nice draft of a query letter for my WIP, which got me thinking about comps, a.ka. comparable titles.
Previous entires:
The WIP Report: Comps
Undoubtedly, one of the hardest parts of the whole writing process is the query letter. I took a free class on query letter writing from Jericho Writers. I'll tell you what, it's one of the best free classes I've ever taken. Very useful information, I highly recommend it. It even made me consider laying out the bucks for their paid courses on query letters and synopses. At the time, at least, the prices they were asking didn't seem unreasonable, if the paid courses were of similar or higher quality than the free one I attended.
One interesting takeaway is that you must put as much energy into crafting the query letter as you do into writing the story. Now, this might feel obvious to anyone who's been in the querying trenches for a while or has produced a successful query letter or two. When I started, I certainly didn't understand this—at least, not at a level that led to thoughtful, creative execution. The query letter was an annoying afterthought at best.
My goal with the Vampire Dragons WIP is for the query letter not to be an afterthought. Rather, I want to have one or several drafted before the manuscript is complete. I was very pleased when I had a eureka moment and scribbled out the beginnings of a halfway decent query. This led me to think about comps. Where would my book fit on a shelf? Here are some early ideas…
Aliens meets Dr. Who (I know, I know…a movie and TV show.)
Fonda Lee's EXO meets…not sure yet! Maybe Jennifer Lyle's Swarm
Chuck Wendig's Invasive meets Fonda Lee's EXO
I actually think those are decent comps, but more recent books would be better.
Mira Grant's Into the Drowning Deep meets Diana Urban's Under the Surface
This is a good start, but that's just it…it's a start. I need to find more recent fiction for my comps, although Swarm and Under the Surface came out within the last five years. So yeah, my TBR has grown to include potential comps. Too many books, too little time?!
This got me thinking, what comps did I use for my successful query for Dragons Walk Among Us? Here it is: Recent comparable titles are Shadow Scale and Exo. I think those are damn good comps! BUT…I obviously can't use EXO as a comp for Vampire Dragons—it's too old!