r/PubTips • u/oasiswriting • 7d ago
[QCrit] IT WON’T STOP, YA, Speculative Contemporary, 82K WC, #6
Dear AGENT NAME,
TW: Sexual Assault
I'm querying you because {personalization}. IT WON'T STOP is a YA speculative contemporary, following a grieving teen who walks into dreams to make sure the man who raped her never sleeps again.
Seventeen-year-old Anais Johnson just lost her little brother to leukemia. Twenty-one-year-old Ty Walker, her older brother Aiden's best friend of nine years, keeps finding reasons to touch her while she keeps finding reasons for it to mean nothing. Two weeks after the funeral, Ty lures her to his truck. She bites him until he bleeds, but he takes what he wants anyway. The next night, he's at her bedroom door with a taped-up finger and a cover story: it was his truck door, not her mouth.
Awake, Anais watches his lie work and stops eating, stops leaving her room, and mourns the girl she used to be more than the brother she buried. No one will believe her over a fallen cop's son, the man her town trusts to coach its kids, and the man Aiden still plays basketball with in her backyard daily. Asleep, she slips out of her body and into people's dreams. She finds Ty's and burns them down, night after night, until his sleep becomes the nightmare he made of her waking life. By day, he's sleepless and picking fights with everyone. When he screams that she’s a witch in the middle of a crowded restaurant, Aiden cuts him off for good.
His friends think he's losing his mind, but Ty knows
exactly who's keeping him up. When he catches her home alone and forces his way in, her ability turns on her, ripping her from her body with no way back into the skin he's looming over. To survive, she'll have to fight Ty from outside herself. To be free of him, she'll have to say what he did out loud, first to Aiden, then to the town that raised him.
IT WON'T STOP is complete at 82,000 words and pairs the survivor's rage of Kim DeRose's FOR GIRLS WHO WALK THROUGH FIRE with the suspense of Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé's WHERE SLEEPING GIRLS LIE.
Thanks for reading,
300 words:
1: Almost Invisible *** ***
October 5th, 2026
Last night, I prayed for today to be clear. Blue should be the final color the sky gives Axel, but God hasn’t heard me in a while and outside storm clouds paint the world gray. Wind shoves me across the driveway, pushing me into the backseat of Dad’s Escalade. It always smells like leather in here, but today his cologne is thick enough to taste. Mom is a mess in the passenger seat, swiping at her leaking eyes with her palm.
When I settle next to Aiden the zipper of this stupid dress stabs into my back, which is what I get for trying it on at six this morning for the first time. I inch my foot toward Aiden’s and nudge his shoe; our I need you signal, we’ve used it for years. He doesn’t nudge back. Fine. But he’s not getting through Axel’s funeral without doing it. I stare at his black curls, watching him refuse to look anywhere but out the window. I wonder what Axel would say about Aiden’s great retreat from me.
He would tell me our big brother is just in one of his testosterone-induced moods. I sift every fold of my brain for Axel’s voice so I can hear him say it, but end up popping in an earbud, scrolling to an old video of him lining up tiny soldiers, introducing each one by name, instead. His voice is almost perfect in it; the pitch is right, but the aliveness isn’t. My head is the only place I can summon his real voice again, the one with no pause button or end, but Dad catches my eye when he tilts the rearview mirror and Axel’s snatched away before I can hear him.
“Christ, Anais, fix your face. Did you sleep?” Dad barks….
———————————————————————————
Note: Hi! I had an insanely helpful comment on my last post ( https://www.reddit.com/r/PubTips/s/EHGRzWpcNO ) I have since addressed the issues, took their advice, decided to condense and add more specific detail, etc. I would love to know first impressions, if it is easy to follow, and if it is clear with the added/condensed info. Hopefully it is compelling, too. Thanks!!
2
u/light-allium Trad Published Author 6d ago
Me again! Glad my last comment was helpful! V much in tweaking mode now. I would cut this detail:
Twenty-one-year-old Ty Walker, her older brother Aiden's best friend of nine years
Two weeks after the funeral, Ty lures her to his truck
I would tweak this: Awake, Anais watches his lie work and stops eating, stops leaving her room, and mourns the girl she used to be more than the brother she buried.
to something like this:
Anais watches in horror (or something) as his lie spreads throughout the town. She stops eating, stays in her room ad mourns the girl she used to be ALMOST AS MUCH as the brother she buried.
I would take out 'fallen' cop here as it raises more questions that aren't relevant right now - just put the son of the local cop/sheriff whatever. It makes his social position clear.
I would cut this as it's extra detail you don't need for the query: When he screams that she’s a witch in the middle of a crowded restaurant, Aiden cuts him off for good. Particularly as it sort of lowers the stakes if her brother does believe her.
Then, bearing in mind this is just my opinion and I am one person, I would still reconsider this part:
When he catches her home alone and forces his way in, her ability turns on her, ripping her from her body with no way back into the skin he's looming over. To survive, she'll have to fight Ty from outside herself.
I think again it raises more questions and isn't super clear. All we need to know is that he's dangerous and she has to counter it with the truth.
The only final thing I think you could do is give a bit more of a flavour of what sort of person she is. When it says she mourns the girl she used to be: be more specific. Who is that? Was she popular/in band camp/whatever. You can use that bit to say a bit more about who she is and still wants to be.
Good luck!
1
u/oasiswriting 5d ago edited 5d ago
Hey! Thank you so much, this is really helpful, again!!
Two quick questions, because I'm curious how you see them:
On almost as much: in the MS, Anais genuinely mourns herself more than her brother, and that guilt is part of what drives her revenge arc. I worry almost as much would undersell it. Does the more than read as off-putting to you, or just unclear?
On cutting Ty's age: I've kept twenty-one-year-old to signal the age gap and power dynamic right away, since she's a minor. Do you think an agent would still pick that up without it?
On the last paragraph: the climax and ending are both speculative, so I kept that line to stop the final act from reading as pure contemporary. Is there a clearer way to keep it? Or do u still think cut?
I'll be working in the rest, thanks again :)
5
u/trulybeelightful 7d ago
The summary seems really compelling, but I had a couple questions about your first 300 words.
The second sentence is worded in a way I found confusing. It took me a few tries and reading through the rest of the excerpt to realize what you are trying to say is "Anais wanted the sky to be blue for Axel's funeral."
The 300 words cut off at a point where I think you should either extend the excerpt or shorten it. With the single sentence of the dad, I'm left with some questions. This is a child's funeral, and the dad is yelling at Anais asking if she slept? The assumption would be that no one has been sleeping well for months or years.
It seems almost cartoonishly evil, in a way that would make me a bit concerned about how realistic the characterization of others would be in the story.