There’s something uniquely vulnerable about watching literary agents critique your work in real time. During our recent Manuscript Academy live event, we brought together three industry professionals to review queries and first pages across multiple genres—show us what agents really look for–and what emerged was both illuminating and surprisingly encouraging.
“I usually approach queries and first pages with a lot of caution,” admitted Nour Sallam, a literary agent at the Caldwell Agency who’s based in Canada. “I didn’t feel that today.”
That sentiment echoed throughout the cozy, members-only evening. Jessica and Nour agreed that every submission was significantly above the average agent inbox quality. But even excellent work can benefit from refinement, and the agents’ feedback revealed patterns that every writer can learn from.
The Universal Truth: Specificity Wins
If there’s one takeaway from the session, it’s this: agents need specificity to fall in love with your work.
Jessica Sinsheimer, literary agent and co-founder of Manuscript Wish List®, emphasized that agents often spend just 30-60 seconds per query. “Your query real estate is so limited,” she explained. “We can’t remember vague details or sort through confusion at that speed.”
The solution? Test your query with the 30-second challenge: print it out, hand it to someone who knows nothing about your book, set a timer for 30 seconds, then quiz them. What they remember is what agents will catch.
Emotions Beat Plot Points Every Time
One of the most consistent pieces of feedback across genres was to focus on feelings rather than facts.
“It’s easier for your reader to remember a feeling and an image than a bullet-pointed list,” Jessica noted. When a contemporary romance query spent too much time on logistics and not enough on the compelling emotional flip—the protagonist saving her bully—the agents immediately identified the missed opportunity.
Julie Kingsley, screenwriting teacher and Manuscript Academy co-founder, added her perspective: “Like who is she as a character? If she was a third-grade teacher, that would make everything even funnier. Those tiny details say so much.”
The lesson translates across genres. Whether you’re writing thriller, memoir, or middle grade, readers connect with emotion first and plot second.
Genre-Specific Wisdom
Romance: Clarity Is Romantic
Romance queries need to make one thing crystal clear: who will the protagonist end up with?
“I usually like to have a little bit more of an indication of where things are going to go,” Jessica explained when reviewing a dual-timeline romance. “My guess is she’s gonna end up with the Elvis impersonator, and I’d like that to be more clear.”
The agents also stressed the importance of matching comparative titles (comps) to your book’s tone and heat level, not just plot similarity. A sweet beach read and a spicy second-chance romance might have similar premises but set very different reader expectations.
Fantasy: Balance Beauty with Context
Literary fantasy writers often create gorgeous prose—sometimes so gorgeous that readers lose the bigger picture.
Reviewing a beautifully written fantasy opening, Jessica observed: “I have faith that this is gorgeously written. The mood is there, but I’d like a little bit more of the larger context to help make it make sense for me.”
Julie agreed: “You’re so zoomed in, and it’s really beautifully done. But maybe some of those very clear, grounded elements woven in would help.”
The agents also noted that literary fantasy should still signal its fantasy elements early. Beautiful writing alone won’t distinguish it from straight literary fiction in an agent’s mind.
Young Adult: Focus on the Emotional Core
The middle grade submission charmed everyone immediately with its authentic nine-year-old narrator who announced: “This is not a journal. This is going to be a mystery detective book.”
“The voice is incredible,” Julie enthused. “This would be an easy way to hook young readers immediately.”
But even with perfect voice, agents wanted to see the mystery introduced sooner. As Nour noted: “I don’t think a kid would hold onto it for too long. I’m imagining this kid sitting there very excited to write in this book and just get it out.”
Thriller/Horror: Use Tension Strategically
Content warnings aren’t just protective measures—they can be tools for building anticipation.
When reviewing a psychological thriller opening about a drunk driving incident, Jessica admitted: “With the content warning and knowing they’re driving, I started to feel almost physical fear anticipating something horrible. That means it’s effective.”
The key is balancing serene or beautiful imagery with impending danger.
Memoir: Define the Takeaway
Memoir queries need to answer one crucial question: What will readers walk away with?
The agents encouraged memoirists to paint aspirational pictures—not just problems, but beautiful possible outcomes—and to name-drop credentials directly in the bio rather than directing agents to external links.
The First Page Challenge
Opening pages face unique scrutiny because they set expectations for the entire manuscript.
Ground Your Reader
Readers need to know who, where, when, and what within the first page. This doesn’t mean info-dumping, but rather establishing basics through specific details.
Reviewing a dystopian opening with gorgeous imagery (“light dropped from the ceiling in long bars, more sickly yellow here than in the dorms, like overweight fruit or something bruised”), the agents praised the vivid sensory details but wanted clearer grounding about the protagonist’s age and situation.
The Dream Problem
Multiple submissions opened with dream-like states, prompting important discussion about this common pitfall.
“The reason for that rule about not starting with dreams is that readers get to a point where they’re like, ‘Oh, everything you just read, forget it,'” Jessica explained. “We don’t want to feel as if the first few pages—the most important ones—are something for us to disregard.”
If your story requires opening with altered consciousness (sleep paralysis, waking up, etc.), make it immediately clear what’s happening and why it matters.
Play Scenes Out
Information dumps slow pacing, even when beautifully written. The agents consistently encouraged writers to play moments out in real time rather than summarizing.
“If you wrote it literally—and then I opened it up, and then I saw it—that would fix some of that grounding for me,” Julie suggested when a time-jump confused the narrative flow.
Dialogue particularly helps here, revealing character while maintaining momentum.
The Power of “Theorizing”
One craft element the agents universally loved was character “theorizing”—when protagonists wonder, hope, fear, and speculate.
“Theorizing is my favorite type of interiority because it says so much about the character,” Nour explained. “Where your brain goes when you’re creating theories of what’s supposed to happen tells us everything.”
Examples: “Is it this person breaking in to steal the TV? Or is it that other person coming for revenge?” or “I hope it’s this. I hope it’s not that.”
This simple technique reveals personality, values, fears, and stakes while feeling natural rather than forced.
The Q&A session tackled the perennial question: Should you query in December or wait until January?
Two schools of thought emerged:
Camp “Just Get in Line”: Send whenever your query is ready. Agents will get to it eventually, and being in the queue doesn’t hurt.
Camp “Wait Until January”: Queries sitting in inboxes over the holidays accrue “wait time” without generating interest, and agents may wonder why no one else responded.
Jessica offered a middle path: “Consider your own psychology. If you’ll obsess over a comma during December, spend that time editing. January won’t hurt your chances.”
Julie added encouragingly: “January is the happiest month in publishing. Agents come back refreshed with bandwidth to think bigger thoughts and clearer goals for their lists. It’s a really hungry time.”
Nour agreed, noting that agents return from break “hopefully with a little bit more clarity on what they’re looking for and what they’re trying to set as goals for their lists.”
When Do Agents Know?
Writers are often curious about agent reading processes. How far do they read? When do they decide?
“I read until I am sure,” Jessica explained. “Sometimes something happens right away and I’m like, ‘Nope, I am not the right person for this.’ Sometimes it’s ‘I like the writing, let’s see how it goes,’ and I keep reading.”
The “stickiness test” helps agents decide: Do they keep thinking about the manuscript when they set it down?
For full manuscript requests, Nour shared that she usually knows by the 70% mark whether she’ll offer, but always finishes before making the call. “I want to treat your project with the same care that you’ve put into it.”
Early signs of interest? “If I’m taking notes by the 20% mark, your odds of getting an offer are better than most manuscripts—unless something major falls through.”
Agent “Yes Mode”
Agents can get into what Jessica calls “yes mode” when they see something great—they become more likely to see greatness in subsequent queries that day due to confirmation bias and elevated excitement.
This is especially true in January when agents return from break feeling refreshed and excited about building their lists.
The Courage to Submit
Perhaps the most moving moment of the evening came during closing remarks.
“It’s brave to be here,” Jessica told the assembled writers. “It’s brave to put yourself out there and hear us talking about your work as if we were in a coffee shop somewhere. Thank you.”
That bravery deserves recognition. Every writer who submits—whether to an agent, a contest, or a critique group—is choosing to be vulnerable in service of their craft.
Julie added: “Just because we have feedback doesn’t mean your work is bad. These critiques are designed to help you reach your full potential—and increase your request rate.”
Nour’s final assessment reinforced this: “I am very, very impressed, like shockingly impressed. I usually approach queries and first pages with a lot of caution. I didn’t feel that today.”
Moving Forward
The session revealed that the gap between good and great is often surprisingly small—a matter of specificity here, emotional emphasis there, clearer grounding in another spot.
For writers currently querying, these insights offer concrete revision opportunities. For those still drafting, they provide guidance on what agents notice immediately.
Most importantly, the evening demonstrated something every writer needs to hear: agents want to fall in love with your work. They’re looking for reasons to say yes, not reasons to say no.
When Jessica described agents as “English majors who want to get an A+ on the pop quiz of your book,” she captured something essential about the agent-writer relationship. Agents are looking for that A-worthy manuscript—the one that makes them think about it during dinner, that keeps them reading past their bedtime, that makes them reach for their phone to call an editor friend.
Your job isn’t to be perfect. It’s to be specific, emotional, grounded, and brave enough to keep submitting until you find the agent who sees excellence in your work.
As the session wrapped up with wishes to “stay warm and enjoy soup season,” the overwhelming feeling wasn’t discouragement but possibility. These writers are close—sometimes just a few tweaks away from the queries and pages that will land them representation.
And in January, when agents return to their inboxes refreshed and excited, ready to build their lists for the new year? Those polished submissions will be waiting.
Curious about future Manuscript Academy events? Coming up: #10Queries on November 24 at 2pm ET, where agents review queries at true inbox speed, and Publishing Help Desk on November 25 at 2pm ET, where you can get answers to questions you can’t Google.
Special thanks to Jessica Sinsheimer (Context Literary Agency), Julie Kingsley (Manuscript Academy), and Nour Sallam (Caldwell Agency) for their generous insights and warm feedback.
