How QueryCheck Scores Your Manuscript
How the readiness score and diagnosis work
QueryCheck gives you a readiness score and a structural diagnosis of your submission package before you send it to a literary agent. This page explains what that score is built on, how it’s calculated, and — just as importantly — what it can’t tell you.
Where the data comes from
The scoring model is grounded in a curated set of real, publicly shared literary-agent manuscript wishlists and query-critique writeups. These are the public records of what working agents say they want, and the specific reasons they give when they critique real queries. Your manuscript details are compared against the patterns in that corpus — it is not a generic AI prompt asked to “grade a query letter.”
What the score measures
Your readiness score is a number out of 100, built from four categories agents weigh in the first two minutes with a submission:
- Hook — Is the premise clear, specific, and driven by a recognisable source of conflict in the first two sentences?
- Plot summary — Are the protagonist’s goal, the central conflict, and the stakes concrete and well-defined without burying the reader in detail?
- Comp titles — Are your comparative titles recent, relevant, and positioned to signal where your book sits in today’s market?
- Vitals — Are genre, word count, and series status stated, and is the word count within the expected range for your category?
Each category is returned with a strong, weak, or missing status and a short explanation of what’s working, what isn’t, and why it matters to an agent — so the score is never just a number you can’t act on.
How the full package is generated
When you unlock a project for $19, QueryCheck drafts your query letter, one-page synopsis, comp-title suggestions, and pitch variants from the same manuscript details and the same agent-critique data used to score you. The goal is a draft shaped by what actually gets requests — a strong starting point, not a finished, sign-and-send document.
What QueryCheck can’t do
Being honest about the limits is part of the methodology:
- It does not read your full manuscript. The diagnosis is based on the details you provide in the intake form, not the prose of your novel.
- It cannot predict whether an agent will offer representation. No tool can. A strong score means your package avoids the common, avoidable reasons for an instant pass — not that acceptance is guaranteed.
- It cannot verify facts. Always fact-check generated comp titles, agent names, and agency-specific submission rules yourself before sending anything.
- It is a drafting and diagnostic aid. Review, edit, and make every generated document your own before you query.
Ready to see where your submission stands? Start your free diagnosis — no account needed to begin.