Evil Editor's Blog, page 112

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...on having your book edited by Evil Editor, the world's most famous editor. Go to this page to read all about it. Then click on Bid Now.

The opening bids are high, probably because starting at $5.00 with $5.00 increments takes forever. So if you, like most of EE's minions, are barely scraping by, this probably isn't for you. But if you make charitable contributions every year, and get nothing in return other than a tax deduction and the satisfaction of helping some worthy cause, here's your chance to get back all of that plus get your book proofread, edited, and critiqued by EE.

In the Brenda Novak auction, this item has brought an average of about $2400 over the past five years. But not as many people know about this much smaller auction, so you could win me for the minimum bid.

While I make no guarantees, the last person to win one of my full edits has sold her book to Sourcebooks, and will see it in print in April.

Evil Editor Classics

Guess the Plot

Elementals

1. AU loves Fe but Fe only has eyes for the nobles, like sexy little Argon. Meanwhile it's H to Oh! behind the bleachers.

2. When the elemental gods of Earth and Air get into an argument over the game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, Fire burns the paper and Water rusts the scissors. Rock wins.

3. Lori, Max and Nellie start a band whose name is composed of their initials (L, M, N-tals, get it?) but learn they can only get a record contract if they agree to let drug smugglers use their apartment for storage.

4. The last 2 letters of Anna Thompson's first name are the atomic symbol for sodium. The last two letters of her last name are the symbols for oxygen and nitrogen. No, it's not relevant to the plot, but who said there was a plot?

5. A team of superheroes, each of whom has control over an element from the periodic table, take on a quartet of villains, each of whom controls one of the classical elements. Will the Hydrogen Twins join forces with Oxygen Girl to destroy Fire Man?

6. Watson (working on crossword puzzle): Holmes, what's a 10-letter word for mythological beings first appearing in the alchemical works of Paracelsus? Holmes (playing Paganini's Duetto Amoroso on violin): Elementals, my dear Watson.


Original Version

Dear Agent:

18 year-old Anna Thompson has been cursed by a locket and is running out of time. [How much time does she have? What does she have to do before that time runs out? What happens if she fails to do it? We'll be much more concerned if we know she's going to die than if we think her hair will turn green.] When she meets a mysterious young man named Bristan, she thinks all of her problems will be solved, [What makes her think that? What's mysterious about him?] but she couldn’t have been more wrong. Others are after the locket [Who?] that cursed her and are willing to do anything to get it [Does Anna have it? If so, why is she keeping it? If not, what difference does it make if others get the locket?] and Bristan isn’t as innocent as he seems. [Who said he seemed innocent? All you said was he was mysterious.] [If someone used the locket to curse Anna, state that she was cursed by the evil witch Grimblech, not by the locket. If the locket itself is somehow able to curse people, why do people want it? They should be trying to stay clear of it.]

Complete at 95,000 words, ELEMENTALS is a young-adult fantasy novel.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,


Notes

This is nothing. Start over. Write a plot summary that answers my questions with specific information. It should sound like this:

18 year-old Anna Thompson has been cursed. If she isn't married by the day she turns 19, her locked locket will explode, scattering her remains throughout the kingdom. Is there no one willing to marry Anna the sewage collector?

When she meets a young locksmith named Bristan, she thinks all of her problems are solved, but he informs her that she doesn't need a locksmith, she needs a locketsmith. The only locketsmith in the kingdom lives in the Bog of Death, so Anna sets out to find him.

But the Beagle Boys want the locket; they can use it to curse Uncle Scrooge and finally acquire his riches. They trail Anna through the Bog of Death, hoping to grab the locket as soon as the locketsmith unlocks it and removes it from around her neck. Now, unless Anna discovers the sewage has given her power over the elements, allowing her to call forth a rainstorm of beryllium and tungsten, Scrooge McDuck is doomed to become a pauper.


Selected Comments

Emily S said...Yes, please give details. Let us know how this story is different from the others.


AlaskaRavenclaw said...Watch out for tense shifts, too.

When she meets a mysterious young man named Bristan, she thinks all of her problems will be solved, but she couldn’t have been more wrong.

shd be

When she meets a mysterious young man named Bristan, she thinks all of her problems will be solved, but she couldn’t be more wrong.

for grammar.

For scansion it should be

When she meets a mysterious young man named Bristan she thinks all of her problems are solved. But she couldn’t be more wrong.

For protagonist-who-protags, it should be

When she meets a mysterious young man named Bristan, she shakes her head at his mysteriousness and returns to her regularly scheduled program of kicking ass and taking names.


Chicory said...Nooo! Not a pauper McDuck! Talk about raising the stakes.

Seriously, EE is right that the outline doesn't give enough detail, AND that `mysterious' is not the same as `innocent'. In fact, as soon as the word mysterious was used to describe Bristan I instantly suspected him of being a vampire, which is about as un-innocent as you can get.


Anonymous said...What they said. It is good to be able to blurt out a your plot in just a few words, but this description provides too little info to distinguish your project from the slush. At least we can tell it belongs to the fantasy genre.

If you send pages also, maybe the agent's minion will glance at those. Maybe not.


Anonymous said...Well, I think EE's full of poo. There's too much detail in here--take some out. For example, Bristan would be even more mysterious if you didn't tell us his name. Just call him "Mr B", or better yet, "a mysterious stranger."


vkw said...As written - the solution to the problem is simple - give the stupid locket to the people who want it (and who cursed it) and move on with your life already.


Stephen Prosapio said...A woman with a locket is going to die but she runs into a mysterious stranger who's not as innocent as he appears to be? Yes details. Specifics. Where have I heard that before?


Jo-Ann said...When reading it I wondered whether the only way to destroy the locket was to throw it into the fires of mordor.

Not what you want people to think.

You've written 95000 words on the topic. Its great that you worked really hard to condense the plot to a few paragraphs in your query, but it really doesn't tempt anybody to want more. I'm sure your novel brims with backstory and subplots, and kudos that you resisted the temptation to include such detail in the query. But just a little more about Anna and her dilemma would be helpful.


chekurtab said...I'm sure you can pull something coherent out of 95000 words MS to make a query. EE can make a query out of nothing.


Author said...Dear EvilEditor:

Time is something 18 year old Anna Thompson doesn’t have. She has been cursed by a locket and if she doesn’t remove it her soul will be devoured. When she meets Bristan, a young man knowledgeable in all things supernatural, she thinks her problems are solved.

She couldn’t have been more wrong.

Bristan is a Fire Elemental and royal citizen of a world called Everanthia. He tells Anna that she isn’t human but a Water Elemental. He believes the key to breaking her curse lies in his world and convinces her to travel there with him after she loses her parents in a fire. Once in Everanthia, Anna discovers she's not only a Water Elemental, but Everanthia’s future Queen, destined to be hunted by other Elementals in a centuries-old power struggle.

Even worse, she is being stalked by blood-hungry creatures who want the locket. They believe the soul of their malevolent Queen is trapped inside and that if the curse is broken, she will die.

Not sure if she can trust Bristan (or her growing feelings for him), Anna must find a way to rid herself of the locket and its curse while running from enemies intent on one thing: her death.

Complete at 95,000 words, ELEMENTALS is a young-adult fantasy novel.


Zachary Gole said...Much better, IMO. It does raise a few new questions: is everyone in Everanthia an elemental? Does she have any special powers as an elemental? If her parents died in a fire, does she ever suspect that maybe Bristan, a Fire Elemental, might have had something to do with it? But I don't know that those questions necessarily have to be addressed in the query.

The end of the last plot sentence bothers me a little, though. "Anna must find a way to rid herself of the locket and its curse while running from enemies intent on one thing: her death." Aside from its sounding a little melodramatic... well, no. They're not intent only on her death. They're intent on saving (and perhaps releasing?) their Queen from the locket. Her death is only collateral damage. Just "enemies intent on her death" would get the point across more accurately and without the melodrama.

Also, FWIW, I'm not a fan of the fact that Elemental is always capitalized, especially if everyone in Everanthia is an elemental. (We don't generally capitalize Human, after all.) Yes, I know such capitalizational profligacy isn't uncommon in the fantasy genre, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.


Emily S said...This is much, much better. I can see the potential, maybe some darkness to it.

The query still needs personality though.

Also, even though having more information is good, the query now raises too many unanswered questions such as:
How did she end up tied to this cursed locket? How does he know she's a water elemental? and how do they know she's the queen? and is this power struggle because of another heir who wants to kill her so he'll inherit the throne? or is it a different kingdom they're warring with?

Because answering all of these in detail would make a long query - maybe it would help to answer some of the questions and leave some of the other question raising bits out.

Oh and the sentence that mentions her parents dying writes it like an afterthought. It doesn't really go with the rest of the sentence.


AA said...This has more details, but it's not much clearer, unfortunately.

I'm still not sure why Anna can't remove the locket. I'm assuming that's part of the curse, but I'm guessing those that are chasing her wouldn't have to kill her if they could just get the locket away instead. Doesn't Anna's death break the curse? That couldn't work because if the curse is broken the soul of the Queen dies. This would require Anna to remain cursed after her own death. First, kill Anna WITHOUT breaking the curse (??), then get the locket?

There's still no explanation as to the origin of the curse. Apparently Anna is royalty in another world, but that doesn't automatically equal wearing a cursed locket with the soul of another person in it.

The Evil Queen being inside the locket is a good detail and I think definitely should be included.


AlaskaRavenclaw said...This is better in that it has more details. But it's still got the grammatical error. If you're in present tense, stay in it: she couldn't *BE* more wrong.

And it's still got the cursing locket that threw people first time through. Find another way to say "cursed by a locket".

Things seem to be happening randomly. Why are lockets cursing your protag, why is she a water elemental, and why do evil creatures want her dead?

And why did her parents die in a fire?

It must all hang together somehow-- show us how.

Face-Lift 1183

Guess the Plot

False Memories

1. I was walking down the beach in Malibu when Julia Roberts came running down from her mansion and invited me up for a nooner. Then there was the time I went to get my driver's license renewed and there was no line. And once . . .

2. In the future, when dentures come with a free set of fake memories, two octogenarians find a way to hook up as versions of themselves fifty years ago. Can they stay inside their memories, or will their nasty nurse "spill" their memory tumblers?

3. Reg is haunted by memories of alien abductions and painful and invasive medical procedures. Finally he meets a hypnotherapist who eases his mind and relieves the terrifying flashbacks. But were the memories real in the first place? Or is the therapist manipulating him into becoming a hitman for the CIA?

4. Is her name Margot, or Celeste? Is she a brain surgeon, or a deep cover Russian operative? And why does she have a gun smoking in her hand? All of these questions might be answered whenever whoever she is analyzes her . . . False Memories.

5. Down South.

6. When Allison goes into the hospital for brain surgery, the surgeon decides to try an experimental procedure, grafting a dead girl's gray matter onto her brain. Now Allison's remembering stuff that happened to the dead chick and getting involved in her life of drug abuse and murder. Which, frankly, is more interesting than her own life ever was.

7. When Meagen didn't grow into the voluptous busty gal she always wanted to be she sought the knife of a famous plastic surgeon. Now she's in demand and loving it. The problem is she didn't pay the piper and the repo man is hunting her. Will she live the life of false mammaries or renege and develop . . . false memories?



Original Version

Most Evil Editor,

Sixteen-year-old Allison wakes up after losing ten months to a car accident and brain surgery – not your average brain surgery, but an experiment grafting some dead chick’s gray matter to her own. [Surgeon: I don't like the looks of this chick's brain. Let's try something unusual. Nurse, is there a dead chick around whose brain we could scrape some gray matter out of? And some super glue?] Her life’s in ruins: stuck in a rehab hospital, she’s hearing voices and reliving what the doctors call false memories – but the lure of that one Kansas pasture remains. [Wait, what? What Kansas pasture?]

Allison explores the memories, until her parents, surgeon and psychiatrist insist on drugs to block the thoughts. Drugs she won’t take. They think she’s crazy, [Is that how the psychiatrist worded his prognosis when talking to Allison's parents? "I think she's crazy."?] but the voice, begging for help, feels like her only sanity – a dead girl [chick] wanting to make amends to the little brother she left behind. Allison goes AWOL from rehab, heading to a town she’s never seen before and stumbling onto tragedy, drug abuse and murder. Then Allison wants redemption for a life that slipped over the edge – even knowing she could be next.

FALSE MEMORIES is a contemporary YA, complete at 48,000 words with series potential. [Is it a series in which each book is about another character who has gray matter from some dead chick grafted onto her brain, or are all the books about Allison adapting to having some dead chick's gray matter on her brain?] The manuscript is written in dual points of view (Allison as well as the girl who died) [I think you should continue to refer to her as the dead chick.] and would appeal to fans of THIRTEEN REASONS WHY.

I’m a member of SCBWI, and write both MG and YA. I practice medicine as well, but [not legally.] I’ve yet to master the brain-grafting-thing; it seemed so easy in the story. [The problem is obvious. In the book, the dead chick is fresh, and they can get the gray matter with a spoon. You're apparently using a chick who's been dead about 12 hours; try a chisel.]


Notes

Is the Kansas pasture Allison's memory or the dead chick's? And why is it in the query?

I'm thinking you could just tell about the brain surgery and "memories" and say that Allison believes they feel too real to be "false," without mentioning the gray matter graft. Even if you're dead-set on the graft in the book (instead of the dead girl having died in the same accident, or having been in the same hospital room with Allison), because it's believable in the book, you can do without it in the query, where it may give the wrong impression about the book, namely that it's totally wacko.

The setup: Allison wakes from 10 months in a coma to find she has memories of a girl who died recently. She sets out to find some kind of redemption for the girl. That's about all we have. We want more. We want to know what she does, who wants to stop her from butting in, what's her plan, what if she fails?

SnowToons

Face-Lift 1182

Guess the Plot

Things I Can't Unsee

1. Vampires crashing my mother's funeral.

2. My sister choking to death on the jerky I gave her.

3. My grandparents having sex on the floor.

4. Happy Gilmore

5. My gym teacher's penis.

6. Satan killing my family.


Original Version

Dear Evil Editor,

Enid Apcarne is a good girl who’s lived a sheltered life for eighteen years—[ When I hear the phrase "good girl" I assume we're talking about a four-year-old or a dog, not an eighteen-year-old.] [Also, the name "Enid Apcarne" sounds like a name that somewhere in the book is going to turn out to be an anagram of something, and the key to solving a mystery. For instance:


 Canine Padre



                                               or 

                                Darn Nice Ape







The darn nice ape, of course, is Magilla Gorilla. I haven't thought about Magilla Gorilla in decades, but fortunately his theme song is available at YouTube. Which I mention not because the theme song is good, but because what if you were one of the singers on the theme song, and it turned out that the most impressive thing you ever did in your life was to sing on this theme song? Would you put it on your resume? Could you even live with yourself? Anyway, do you really want your readers stopping on page 1 to try to solve an anagram?] until strangers crash her mother’s funeral and freak her father, Morcant, right the hell out. Though he tries hard, he can’t hide his closet-skeletons from her for long.

Morcant’s a law-abiding, church-going man now, but he wasn’t always. He’s a vampire who spent nearly 900 years killing, maiming, and wreaking general havoc before settling down. [Hey, we all go through our wild periods.] The strangers are fellow vampires from Morcant’s law-breaking, church-burning days who want to draw him back into his old life. They try to kill Enid and her younger brother, Geraint, [Anagram: ingrate.] and only barely fail. [If I were trying to convince one of my old army buddies to join me in painting the town red for old time's sake, murdering his children would not be high on my list of inducements. Maybe it's different with vampires.] Then they kidnap Geraint, intending to turn him into a vampire. While Morcant gets distracted by his former lover, [I gotta go rescue my son from . . . You look fantastic for 700 years old, babe.] Enid struggles to stop the vampires from ripping her family apart, preferably before [they rip her throat apart.] she becomes their next victim.
But then she learns that Morcant’s not really her father, [Did he adopt her? I ask because an adoption agency would have to be pretty lax to let a guy with 900 years of killing, maiming and church burning in his past pass a background check.] and she’s not quite human herself. She can see visions of people’s pasts—a dangerous gift around someone with that much blood on his hands. [She's been around him for eighteen years.] The more she learns about Morcant’s past, the less sure she is that she even wants to save him. [It's not Morcant who needs saving; it's Geraint. And ASAP.]
THINGS I CAN’T UNSEE is a 122,000-word YA urban fantasy novel.
Thank you for your time and consideration.


Notes

The opening phrase isn't grabbing me. How about: The day of Enid Apcarne's mother's funeral was a downer even before the gang of vampires crashed the service and demanded that Enid's father join them on a church-burning/killing spree. And things only went downhill from there.

This "not quite human" aspect comes in kind of late. Are her visions the only thing making her not quite human? Because if she has no other powers, it's hard to buy a gang of vampires failing to kill her. Unless she's wearing a garlic necklace, holding a cross, and the sun is just coming up.

Is Morcant Geraint's father? Where's Enid's father?

Even though it's not all backstory and setup, it doesn't take us very far into the book. Basically, Enid finds out stuff about her father's past, and that he's not her father, and that she suddenly can see other people's pasts. So what does she do with this knowledge? What does she want? How does she plan to get it? What happens if she fails?

Success Story

Jennifer Buhl reports that her book Shooting Stars is scheduled for release April 1. The book is available for pre-order at Amazon. Some of you may recall the book from Face-Lift 1028, where it was titled Snap! Memoir of a Paparazza.

Jennifer also reports that she has some TV interviews scheduled, "including Entertainment Tonight and (my favorite) Fox and Friends (not)."

The author was the winning bidder of a complete edit by EE in last year's Brenda Novak auction, and you can win a complete edit by EE in Irene Goodman's February auction to benefit hearing and vision charities. Bidding opens soon.

Evil Editor Classics

Guess the Plot

Flesh and Steel

1. Lois Lane once got goose-flesh just thinking about her hunky man of steel. Turns out his feet are cold as ice, he's too heavy to be on top, and she can't friggin' breathe when he hugs her. Also, grabbing a magazine and announcing "I'm off to the Fortress of Solitude" was only funny the first hundred times.

2. The sociopath known as the Butcher of Kafran-Helai falls in love with a local villager, and has second thoughts about creating an army of robot werewolves to overrun the village.

3. There's a war. People die. There's a plague. More people die. There's a smith and a doctor. They philosophize about life, do business, and die to the ZOMBIE HORDES!!!!!!

4. Jerome, lives in a world of science. He switches places with his alternate reality self who lives in a world of magic. They're both happy until they find out their universes are now colliding. If they destroy technology in both universes will they be able to stay where they are?

5. Vegas show promoter Roxy has what she thinks is the perfect concept for a new act: naked sword fighting. Rehearsals soon prove that the idea is not without a few hitches.

6. Afflicted with a rare bone disease, Charles Garvin agrees to an experimental treatment in which his bones are replaced by steel rods. He decides to become a superhero known as Captain Steel, but it turns out he weighs so much he can't even get out of his hospital bed.


Original Version

Sfanior thought she was going to be killed when she demanded the Butcher of Kafran-Helai stop stealing and desecrating her village’s dead. [Understandable. It's almost always a mistake to make demands of someone who goes by the name The Butcher of Kafran-Helai.] [When someone named the Butcher of Kafran-Helai comes into my village, I'm overjoyed to find he wants only the dead. Take our dead; they're only obstructing goat-cart traffic anyway.] Instead, the sociopathic and strangely charismatic Friché merely imprisoned her in a castle maintained by automatons, patchwork combinations of human, animal, and machine. [Robot werewolves.] Despite Friché’s difficulty grasping concepts like respect for the dead, Sfanior is drawn to her. [This sociopath may have used my father's corpse to create a robot werewolf, but I'm a sucker for anyone with the "it" factor.] Compared to the stuffy rules and stifling traditions of the village, life in Friché’s castle is freedom. [Except when the moon is full and the robot werewolves run amok.] Sfanior soon finds her growing feelings eclipsing her desire to defend her home, especially when Friché finally returns her love. [Question for discussion: Did Clarisse ever return Hannibal Lecter's love?]

Sfanior is ready to turn her back on her former kith and kin when Friché receives a client who offers her a job. Make that a noble from the capital, who offers the very secret assignment of creating an army of automatons for the queen. Friché is overjoyed, but Sfanior is suspicious (why approach the Butcher, of all people?) [Wait, Friché is the Butcher? Am I the only one that wasn't clear to? I thought she was one of the Butcher's minions.] [I guess I'm just not used to women being nicknamed the Butcher of Anywhere.] [Also, whaddaya mean, Why approach the Butcher, of all people? The Butcher has a castle full of automatons, and thus seems like the obvious person to approach if you want an army of automatons. It's not like you can approach just anyone and place an order for an army of automatons. My question is, How do you keep your assignment secret when it involves creating an army of anything? There's a reason Hobbits didn't often travel to Mordor. Word quickly got around that there was an army of Orcs being created.] and she cannot help feeling abandoned when the work sucks up all of Friché’s time. [Hey, when you fall for a sociopath, the price you pay is having to play second fiddle to her "work."] Her suspicions are soon realized when she discovers how the client intends to tie up loose ends once the job is done – with an execution. [I can live with the fact that you've hired my lover to create an army of robot werewolves that will destroy my home village, but I will not stand for an execution.]

As Friché draws [Withdraws?] further into herself and the noble’s threat hangs over her head, Sfanior has to decide what is most important: her kin and kingdom, or her love.

FLESH AND STEEL is a romantic fantasy of 60,000 words.

Thank you for your time and consideration,


Notes

Can't Friché program/train the army of robot werewolves to protect her from the noble if he/she should betray her?

Usually people who have armies aren't that interested in villages. They want to attack other kingdoms. Is it her village that Sfanior wants to defend from the army of robot werewolves?

Also, usually in a romantic fantasy, neither of the people who are in love is a sociopath creating an army of robot werewolves. It may be difficult for readers to root for the heroine to live happily ever after with someone known as the Butcher of Kafran-Helai.

What I'm saying is I'm sure in the book the Butcher has a softer side, but that needs to come across in the query if you're going to describe the book as romantic.


Selected Comments

Anonymous Aika said...I think you need to bump up Sfanior's likeable qualities. I'm sure she redeems herself by choosing kin and kingdom, but your query emphasizes the opposite, the part where she abandons her principles and family for her bad girl crush. Why would a reader like her?

Also, the query reads as if it is mostly set-up. Sfanior falls in love with the sociopath who's been attacking her home. That leaves you with just one sentence of plot - now she discovers a scheme to assassinate her sociopath lover. (My reaction was: "perfect", which I don't think is the reaction you want to evoke. Can you make it clearer she has an actual dilemma?)

The automatons sound interesting and super creepy. Are any of them made of parts of Sfanior's relatives? Do they talk sense into S?


vkw said...Is it me or is this a no brainer?

"Sfanior has to decide what is most important: her kin and kingdom, or her love."

I've seen this particular delimma a few times in queries - should I save my familiy and homeland or stay with my lover? Hmmm. Let me think. . .I wonder if someone will think I am a sociopath for not doing whatever I could to defend my friends and family. The answer would be YES. Hmmm, let me think, should I stay with my sociopath lover who basically is ignoring me and making deals with the evil queen or try to save my homeland? Hmmmmm. I wonder if someone will consider me socially and intellectually challenged for even contemplating what most would find to be obvious answer to that question. The answer is still YES.
If your hero has some valid reason to hate her kinfolk - like they tear the heads off of chickens and roast children alive, then perhaps you should let us know. Otherwise a different delimma should be considered.

Perhaps the hero's delimma is more along the lines she knows there is nothing she can do to help that wouldn't end up with her being killed. So should she even try? If she does succeed, she'll lose her lover and that's going to be sad but at least she can live with herself. And, if this not the case. . . do you have a hero you can tell us about?


Whirlochre said...Sfanior sounds like a pun waiting to happen. Or a snake creeping about in a pair of knickers worn by a hussy.

No matter how I try, I can't get past this, subjective me.

Meanwhile, decide on your style. The strangely charismatic section makes you sound erudite but later you use more casual phrases like "sucks up" and "tie up loose ends".

Agree with vkw about the dilemma.


Chelsea P. said...Okay so say Friche is born of a race that Sfanior's people have oppressed and vilified and she's not really a villain, Sfanior just starts out thinking she is because that's what she's always been taught. And maybe she's stealing the dead to use as her patchwork automatons to defend against Sfanior's people's army because it's the only way to survive. And MAYBE the Queen has been kind of ambivalent about the war between Friche and Sfanior's people but now that she wants something from Friche, Friche will have a fighting chance against those stuffy ruled villagers with stifling traditions.

In other words, maybe there is something really wrong with Sfanior's people and that's why choosing between them and Friche is a relatable dilemma. We get "stuffy rules" and "stifling traditions" but what we really need are "barbaric customs" and "a penchant for locking up their women" in order for us to understand why a sociopath's castle represents freedom for Sfanior. We need, at least, something to somewhat vilify the villagers because otherwise Friche sounds like an unsympathetic psycho and Sfanior sounds young and naive *at best*.

These are, of course, just my opinions. And the story may well support my theory that there is, in fact, something bad or sinister about Sfanior's villagers. If it does, we just need to see that in the query.

The writing is enticing and there are a lot of intriquing elements here. I just need to understand the main characters a bit more.


Khitty Hawk said...Author here. Hi everyone.

(Who submitted GTP #5? Have you seen this?: http://www.themarysue.com/topless-fem...)

Remember the person who asked if I could practice query-writing for something in the really early stages? Like ‘barely have a chapter written’ early? Yeah, that was me.

I wrote up an explanation to everyone's questions, but it ended up being twice as long as the query itself. Would you like me to post it anyway, asking the readers what would be most relevant to put in a query?

So far I do plan to boost everyone's likability by 200% and explain how they fall in love instead of just merely stating it.


Khazar-khum said...I was thrown off by the Butcher being a woman. Not because I think women aren't inherently capable of butchery, but because the title 'butcher' is typically used for a male.

Why should she pick her now-distant lover over her home? Does the Butcher distance herself from her lovers before turning them into robot werewolves?


AlaskaRavenclaw said...At one time the feminine ending for a person engaged in a trade was -ster. This survives in the surnames Brewster, Webster [weaver], Baxter [baker], I can't think of any others right now.

So I suppose a female butcher would be a Butchster. We talked before about people named Butcher. I'm pretty sure no one is named Butchster.

I do remember reading once a passing reference to a female butcher in 18th century NYC.

About the only thing I have to say about this query is that giving your characters odd names is problematic. For one thing, it makes it difficult for readers to identify with the character if they can't remember his/her name.


Khitty Hawk said...I'll admit that I use more unusual names because I'm tired of fantastical names that fit too well into English phonology.

Reading the comments, I've replaced 'sociopathic' with 'antisocial'. I meant that Friché has some problems with empathy and understanding why people do illogical things, not that she's a closet serial killer who tortures bunnies.

@Chelsea P.  I wouldn't call the villagers barbaric so much, but they are definitely repressive to women. The only reason Sfanior even confronts Friché is because her father caught her flirting and demanded she must marry to prevent any further shame. Sfanior, who's heard some horror stories, panics and asks the elders if they would let her be if she could chase away the Butcher.

Looking at the story again, it now seems that it's less that Sfanior must choose between Friché and her village and more that she wants to be treated equally, and Friché ends up doing so first. Will change that.

(As for the automaton army, uh, it's actually a cover story? The client actually needs some ridiculously complicated surgery that no one can know about and plans to nuke the area when she's gotten what she wants. Kind of like Sfanior's backstory up there, I wasn't sure if this would make the query too complicated.)

Evil Editor Classics

Guess the Plot

The Travelers

1. Raels travels from Australia to attend college, and meets other visitors who become obsessed with her. Two of them just want to get her in the sack, but one of them wants her dead, because she's a danger to all of . . . the Travelers.

2. Some of the gods hang out in heavenly Olympus. Others are Travelers who roam the universe and make occasional visits to our world to cause trouble, get laid, do battle, whatever. This is their story according to a talking Liverpool cat who was formerly Prime Minister of England.

3. Take one map, one car, a girl with no sense of direction, a mysterious hitchhiker and toss out the map. Wherever The Travelers go, trouble and romance follow.

4. When Mark and Mason Colbert, the twin singers who founded the 60's folk group "The Travelers", are found stuffed together in an antique steamer trunk, homicide detective Zack Martinez knows two things: someone took the group's old song "Bound Together" a little too literally; and he'll be stuck dealing with aged hippies all weekend.

5. A scrappy band of exiles from planet Zora-nai agree to transport land-dwellers infected with the Red Plague across hostile skies to quarantine in exchange for a full reprieve. But the Plague looks curiously like political dissent, and reprieve looks less and less tempting.

6. Mo, Dixie and their week-old daughter Sunsprout hop a Greyhound from Utica, New York to Seattle, Washington. But when they get off in Billings, Montana to buy diapers, they find themselves mistaken for spies who've come to trade Soviet-era nuclear weapons for gold stolen from Fort Knox.


Original Version

Dear [Agent],

I am seeking representation for my 100,000-word young adult paranormal novel, The Travelers, a story about an Australian girl who discovers a link between two handsome students and ghost stories in her college town.

When 18-year old Raels starts her freshman year at Algonquin University, strange things happen from the moment she steps off the train. A shockingly attractive stranger guides her to her dormitory, then vanishes in mid-air. [Was he/she in midair during the entire trip to the dormitory? Because if someone hovering in midair offered to guide me somewhere, I'd hail a cab.] [There are enough attractive people in the world that I doubt it would be shocking to encounter one.] Dark shapes seem to follow her through the forest when she goes jogging. [I thought this was a list of strange things that happened as soon as she stepped off the train. Why is she jogging through a forest?] The mystery turns sinister [What is the mystery?] one night when she witnesses a woman pushing a man off of Ulysses Tower—but when she peers over the edge, there’s no body below. [He vanished in midair. Happens a lot in this place.] [Isn't it odd for a freshman girl to be on top of a tower at night? That sounds more like a sophomore guy thing.]

Masquerading as PhD students, Zane and Severin are actually members of an elite group of djinn who sojourn in the human world. They call themselves Travelers. Witty, sly, charismatic and cruel, Zane thinks he has seen it all before. Aloof and quietly observant, Severin is Zane’s protégé. [Are we still in the same novel?] [I'd dump these adjective lists and focus on what happens.] But neither knows what to make of Raels, a human who has an aura almost like the djinn. Zane and Severin's friendship is put to the test when they both start pursuing her.

Like _Twilight_ or Becca Fitzpatrick’s_ Hush Hush_, this [book could be a huge moneymaker, possibly for you. It] is a story about [You already said what it was a story about in the first paragraph. Choose the description you like best and live with it.] an ordinary girl [I don't think a girl with a djinnish aura qualifies as ordinary.] who discovers around her a hidden world of powerful, attractive, and sometimes dangerous creatures. There is a mystery to unravel: who are these beautiful men with pale eyes, and what are their designs on the girl? And there is also an unfolding romance, one which is threatened when an unknown Traveler decides that Raels is a danger to all djinn.

The novel’s fictional college town is based on Princeton University, where I studied [and first encountered Travelers hovering in midair]. [And here I thought it was based on Algonquin College, in Ottawa. This is like saying it's set at fictional Harvard, based on Yale. Sort of.] I currently teach anthropology at a university in Australia and I am the author of an award-winning nonfiction book published by University of Texas Press. Unfortunately, this may not be of much help in marketing the novel [But it will help when they're making the movie trailer: From the producer of The Hangover and the director of Lord of the Rings and the author of The Anthropology of Aboriginal Societies comes . . . ] since the overlap between readers of ethnography and paranormal genre fiction is not huge (if the snickers of my colleagues are anything to go by), [Your colleagues are idiots. Paranormal fans are into vampires, wolfmen, zombies and Bulgarians, four of the leading ethnography . . . things.] but I will shamelessly promote the book amongst the 1000+ students I teach every year [Welcome to Anthropology 101. The three textbooks for this class will be Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, The Human Species: a New Perspective, and The Travelers.] [You claim you teach 1000+ students about Anthropology every year? Maybe fiction is the right field for you.] with promises of extra credit for anyone who reviews it on Goodreads.com. [Do they have to read it or just review it?] ["I gave your f#*king Travelers five stars on Goodreads! And you give me a C?!! WTF?"]

Thanks for your time and consideration. Enclosed are a short synopsis and the first three chapters. Please let me know if you would like to review the full manuscript.

Sincerely, etc


Notes

Too much of this is spent introducing the characters and the setting, and too little on the plot. What's the story? What happens? Who is Raels (really), what danger is she in, what is she gonna do about it, and what happens if she fails? Don't describe the book's aura; tell the story.


Selected Comments

Anonymous Anonymous said...Having your main character be attractive to beautiful others isn't a major achievement in fiction, so no need to say much about that. Your plot description seems under-developed. I'm expecting the book to lack action while you ramble on about how good looking everyone is.


Eric said..."I'm expecting the book to lack action while you ramble on about how good looking everyone is." Well, the query did say it was like Twilight...

Seriously though. Most editors are already even more aware than you are that your academic publishing history is not relevant to your current project; so there's no point taking a whole paragraph to say so. If you want to mention your previous publishing cred, just say, "My non-fiction book Unfortunately Nothing To Do With Vampires was published in 2009 by University of Texas Press and won an X award," end sentence.

With that paragraph gone, you've got more space to describe the plot, which is what you should be doing in the first place.

If the "mystery" is "who are these beautiful men with pale eyes?" that was already answered in the previous paragraph. Djinn is a good concept, but not a plot. How does the suspense develop as a story in your book? Tell us what happens!


Phoenix Sullivan said...Author, another thing to think about is that this isn't YA. The protag is 18 and the djinn are masquerading as 24-year-olds (4 years undergrad + 2 years masters = Ph.D. student).

One Big 6 imprint was experimenting with "New Adult" titles (ages 18-20 or 22) -- I'm not sure how successful that is/has been. Otherwise, the ages of your characters, if pitched as YA and described in terms of school and other YA conventions, will likely make this an auto reject from editors and agents alike.

So for homework, think about how you would pitch this outside of YA.


150 said...I'm not sure "And I'm willing to assign grades dishonestly for personal gain!" is something you want to put in a business letter. Even to an agent.


Scarecrow Boat said...The beginning of the query was beginning to pull me in, but then it did sort of take a nose-dive into chit-chat about snickering colleagues and such. Cutting it all out is going to free up a lot of space to expand on the plot.

Also, I had no idea what a djinn was until I looked it up. Is that dumb of me? Not sure if that's common knowledge or not.


Ryan Mueller said...This query letter is way too long as it is right now, and it doesn't really tell us anything.

What I'm getting from this:

-There are hot ghosts following Raels (not sure about the name; it might bother a lot of readers to have a main character whose name they don't know how to pronounce).

-Mysterious things are happening, but I'm not quite sure exactly what they are.

-Only Raels seems to notice that anything strange is happening.


I also found the sudden transition to Zane and Severin jarring. Up to that point, the focus of the query is entirely on Raels. Introducing two new characters like this is abrupt.

Here's the general outline of what your query should answer:

-What does Raels want?

At this point, you haven't really given her motivation (I'm sure it's there in the book, but it's not here). Does she want to solve the mystery? Does she want to hook up with the hot ghosts or djinn (or whatever they are)?

-What's keeping her from getting it?

You hint at an unfolding romance and a Traveler who sees her as a threat to all djinn. But this needs to be a little clearer.

-What choice/decision does she face?

Right now, I don't really see anything to answer this question.

-What terrible thing will happen if she makes the wrong choice?

You don't have to answer these questions exactly. Every story is different. But you should provide enough details to give an agent a better idea.

As of now, it seems like everything happens to Raels. What does she do?

The key is finding succinct plot details instead of saying vague things like, "This is a story about..."


vkw said...My first thought is: Is it ethical to give extra credit in Anthropology for reviewing the professor's book?

I'm not being judgmental but I would strongly encourage you to make sure you get a written letter from your Dean, stating he/she will allow this.

I had a professor who has written two textbooks now in her field of study - two very good books by the way; and her university would not allow her to require students to read her textbooks until she could prove that professors in other universities would use the textbook.

Try selling that to your editor! "Wrote this great textbook covering a narrow field that no one has covered, but before I can require my 56 graduate students to read it my colleagues in VA have to agree to use it in their class - fortunately they like me, I'm sure they do and I am the national expert in this field. . . I'm sure this isn't going to be problem."

As for the query - I'll take a look at it later - right now I'm trying to save your day job.


AlaskaRavenclaw said...EE, when you were a sophomore boy you clearly did not know the right freshman girls.

Author, take it from me, there is nothing more embarrassing than getting five stars from people who gleefully state in the review that they are your students. (And this happens even if you don't ask them to do it.)

I get that the penultimate graf is humorously intended, but it could also come across as flaky (ntm, since people already have, unethical). This is a business letter: Play it straight.


Kings Falcon said...I'm not sure if the "will force students to review this book for better grades" was meant as humor (like the sniggering colleagues) but as you can tell from the comments, it fell flat. Worse, it's a BIG red flag to avoid this story. The last thing any professional wants to do is work with someone of suspect ethics. Again, your ethics might be just fine, but that's not how it comes across. Regardless, you've gotten more comments on the "will review for grades" portion than the rest of the query. Ditch it. It's distracting and may hurt your chances.

Are you sure Raels is your main character? Because she sounds awfully passive in your query and that's not good for a main character. BTW - I keep trying to type "Reals" for "Raels." If she goes by "Rae" just call her Rae.

As Pheonix pointed out, given Rae's age, the story isn't really YA. It needs to stand up against Adult Urban Fantasy.

Query writing is frustrating since you need to be specific but at the same time general enough to convey the information an agent or editor must have when looking at your proposal. You suffer from having the wrong details in this query.

Maybe something like:

Raels didn't expect college to be easy, but she figured physics was the worse thing she'd have to overcome. Unfortunately, she finds out that she's not quite human and her new boyfriend is a Djinn.

Now tell me why people are either trying to seduce or kill her.


BuffySquirrel said...I like the setup, but what happens? What's at stake?

And don't worry about the minions complaining about character names. They do that to all the Aussies.


batgirl said...No one made a lame pun about Travelers riding the Raels? Okay, I guess it's up to me.


batgirl said...Oh, and one small observation: the Morganville Vampires series is set in a smalltown college, the heroine is a first-year student, and it's marketed as YA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Morg...


Bell Curran said...Hi everyone, author of The Travelers query letter here. Thanks for comments and good advice about focusing query letter on plot rather than set-up and beauty of characters (but srsly isn't that what teen girl readers / adult women romance readers all want to read about? beautiful boys? Eric nailed it with his Twilight comment).

batgirl, totally awesome pun -- I may have to change heroine's name just because of that.

And to everyone, the paragraph about my snickering colleagues (yes they mock me) and me assigning the book to my students (good Lord I would never do that -- I don't even assign my anthropology book to them, never mind an urban fantasy novel!) was just me being silly for this blog. I'd never put that in the query letter I submit. Everything else was in serious -- I swear I'm not trying to waste everyone's time and critical brain activity on a bogus query letter! But clearly the joke fell flat. Sigh.

EE yes I really teach 1000+ students a year. Frightening isn't it? But 700 of them come from one enormous first-year class about drugs.

Thanks for having fun with it and giving me some great feedback! I'll go write some Guess the Plot descriptions for you now.

Fave-Lift 1181

Guess the Plot

Cursed

1. When Alicia discovers that her sister is being held by The Tinker, who plans to assimilate her into the Borg collective, there's no time to lose. But it's worse than that, because even if Alicia rescues sis, there's a curse that will pit sister against sister in a Thunderdome death match.

2. At 12, Lisa foolishly told her witch of a grandmother that she wanted to be a writer. Grandmother laughed and said, "All you'll ever do is eat words." Now she's 23, starting her first day at a literary agency, and they've given her the slush pile to filter. Was grandmother, after all, right?

Original Version
Dear [Agent]
Alicia of Capeford returns home after being lost at sea [Alicia of Capeford? Is that the name she goes by? Does everyone in Capeford have "of Capeford" as part of their name? Of course I'm aware of Catherine of Aragon and Anne of Cleves and Tarzan of the Apes, but I never knew whether they were called that while alive or later by historians, and if while alive, I never knew if everyone had a place as part of their name or if "of Cleves" was tacked on to distinguish her from Anne of the Thousand Days and Anne of Green Gables or if it was just royalty who got place names added to their names. Clue me in, history buffs.] and discovers that her sister, Keelty, [Wait, shouldn't that be Keelty of Capeford?] has been arrested for witchcraft and sold to a man called Tinker [of Turkey]. He’s infamous for injecting drugs and implanting clockwork into the people he’s bought. Those who are lucky die on the operating table, and those who aren’t become [cyborgs] his mindless slaves. [Question for discussion: Is it better to be dead or a cyborg?] Upon hearing this, Alicia immediately sets out to find and rescue her sister before[she becomes Keelty of the Borg Collective.] it’s too late.
Unfortunately, Tinker isn’t the only monster she must contend with. The Night has fallen on the world of Eisheim [I before e, except after c.], and the sun won’t return for two seasons. During this period, the Duhan roams. It’s a creature that relentlessly stalks and feeds on all who enter its forest, and Alicia’s trek forces her through the heart of its domain. [I'm guessing this wasn't named after Johnny Duhan, whose song "The Voyage" has been sung at millions of weddings, funerals, anniversaries, etc.]
However, both Tinker and the Duhan turn out to be the least of her worries. [I'm glad. You want her biggest worry to have a more terrifying name than Tinker and the Duhan, which reminds me of the cartoon Pinky and the Brain.] [Also, you want your query to focus on the main character's biggest worry, not the least of her worries, and you've devoted two thirds of it to Tinker and the Duhan.] Alicia learns that Keelty had accidentally cursed the family while she was away. [So Keelty is a witch?] Unless Alicia can understand how both Tinker and the Duhan are integral to the spell’s design before the week is up, it will pit her against her sister until one of them kills the other. [It seems to me that by the time she figures out how both Tinker and the Duhan are integral to the spell’s design, Keelty will be a Borg. Shouldn't she rescue Keelty first and then worry about the spell?] [Also, "integral to the spell's design" makes it sound like the spell is one of Tinker's clockwork contraptions.]
Cursed is complete at 72,000 words and is my first novel. The first five pages are included below.
Thank you for your time and consideration,


Notes 

This is mostly the setup. If you condense it to one paragraph:

Alicia returns to her home in Capeford to find that her sister Keelty has been arrested as a witch and sold to The Tinker, a mad scientist who plans to turn her into a mindless slave. What's worse, Keelty has accidentally put a curse on the family, which will pit the two sisters against each other in a caged death match--unless Alicia can reverse the curse.

. . . you'll have room to tell us about Alicia's plan, and what obstacles she must overcome. For instance:

But first things first. Alicia must make her way through a dark forest roamed by basketball player Chris Duhon and rescue Keelty from The Tinker's workshop before he can install his clockwork mechanism where her heart should be.

That still leaves plenty of room to tell us what goes wrong and to take us to the moment of truth when the sisters are about to enter the Thunderdome.


With two people contributing to the Oscar GTP post, and one person contributing a fake plot for this query, perhaps the handwriting is on the wall, and the GTP feature has run its course?

Charity Auction

Mega-Agent Irene Goodman has been running a monthly auction of her expertise and that of other agents and editors for some time now. You can read about it here.

If you regularly make tax-deductible contributions anyway, here's your chance to get something back in addition to the satisfaction of helping others: valuable feedback on your writing from publishing bigwigs (instead of rejection notes from slushpile interns).

I bring this to your attention not only because it's a good cause, but also because I'll be one of the donors in February and I don't want to be embarrassed by a lack of bidding.