one do your research. Seriously. Use the information that's out there. Read a blog post about structuring a query letter, ask a friend to read your query letter, learn what's okay to say and what's not okay to say. There is so much knowledge, help, and expertise available -- so use it! You've gotta stand out somehow, and it starts by looking like you know what you're doing.
two when you include sample pages, don't stop in the middle of a sentence. Say the agent's guidelines ask you to embed one page (or five or twenty) in the body of your email: this probably does not mean strictly one page. End naturally. Like, including one extra sentence isn't going to get you an automatic rejection. Or even including one extra paragraph. One time, an author attached about fifty pages, and I read the whole thing before realizing that it was way more than our guidelines request. Not that I'm suggesting you send fifty pages, but anyway, page guidelines aren't an exact science. Just please: don't stop in the middle of a sentence. It leaves me really
Exactly.
