Evil Editor's Blog, page 160

Face-Lift 1069

Guess the Plot

A Rose by any Other Name

1. The genus Rosa has been the reigning queen of flowers for centuries. But now plant taxonomists are battling to have the common Tea Rose reclassified as a noxious weed. With the help of her gardening association, Rosalie Jenalds must stop these "scientists" before they make cultivation of her favorite plant illegal.

2. Rose Smith is used to getting beaten up on account of his name. Deciding on a moniker with more guts to it, he finds that "Osama Bin Assange" has some unexpected consequences.

3. Disgraced baseball great Pete Rose changes his name, grows a beard, and works his way back into the game playing for a Triple-A farm team.

4. Rose Pederewski, wanted for check fraud in 28 states under 39 different aliases, suddenly finds herself the chief suspect in a nasty murder. How can she clear her names of the crime she didn't commit?

5. 32 year-old Jennie Rogers lied about her age to land a part on TV's "The Rose", a vampire musical dramedy aimed at teens. When hunky production assistant Gabriel Lopez threatens to expose her ruse to the director, Jennie has to decide whether to sleep with him or kill him.

6. Emma comes home for her ten-year reunion, hoping to reconnect with her best friend, Rose. But she didn't count on Rose being a zombie queen who has turned all Emma's closest relations into flesh-eating undead who want Emma as their next snack.


Original Version

Evil Editor,

Emmaline Fay left town to escape her best friend Rose Briar's shadow. That and she fell in love with Rose's man, Jason Prince. Now it's ten-year-reunion time and Emma is still stuck in her shell. She's coming home to reconnect with Rose and help her win Jason back. Too bad Jason's pining for a certain wallflower and a decade old prophecy is going to turn Rose's beauty rest into an undead awakening.

Within days, Emma and Jason must track down the creepy school janitor who predicted Rose's departure from the living and devise a solution to kill their closest relations-- before they start looking for snacks beyond small town Charming. Their only hang-ups? [Obstacles?] Being in love with each other and suffering the mother-of-all-guilt-trips, while justifying the need to kill for survival. This geeky chem engineer and once upon a time All-Star jock are desperately trying to avoid becoming loyal subjects in Zombie Beauty's court. But their attempts to put this flesh feasting princess to sleep may end the romance before it takes off.

A Rose By Any Other Name is a retelling of the fairy tale classic Sleeping Beauty [in that it involves a beauty who does some sleeping,] and is complete at 31,000 words.

I'm an avid reader, romance enthusiast, and reviewer for The Season and IndieBooksRUs sites. Zombies frighten me beyond reason, [Zombies want you to fear them. It's the one thing they have going for them. If more people knew zombies can easily be defeated with flamethrowers or Chinese finger traps, the fear would be gone.] but I love fairy tales and couldn't resist the opportunity of this submission call.

 [Data trapped in Chinese finger trap on Star Trek TNG.] 




 Notes

Presumably this was a submission call for zombie novellas inspired by the titles of fairy tales?

I think you need to make the chronology clear. Emma shows up in her home town and discovers...what? That everyone's a zombie and Rose is their queen? That her closest relations are zombies and Rose is predicted to become one on reunion night? That no one is a zombie but there's a prophecy saying tonight's the night? You say, "Within days" the situation is X. I'm interested in what happened in those days.

Why do they need to find the janitor? Does he hold the key to dezombification?

Face-Lift 195 was for a book titled My Big Sucky Undead High School Reunion. Sadly, it turned out to be vampires instead of zombies, but it was a better title than A Rose by any Other Name. You need a title like Emma and the Flesh-eating Zombie Princess. It is a comedy, right?

Change it from a reunion to senior prom. Emma moved away after junior year, but Jason invited her to the prom. Now it's YA. Double the length, get rid of any obvious Sleeping Beauty references, and I think you've got something.

Back to Work

Submissions have been so light, the minions have apparently stopped checking to see if there are any queries in the queue (needing fake plots) or openings (needing continuations). Turns out there are.

Evil Editor Classics

Guess the Plot

Dark is the Wrong Color of Night

1. Evan is a vampire with a problem--he can feed--and live--only by day. Unfortunately he loves Persephone, a more traditional vampire. They say opposites attract, but can these latent lovebirds overcome the barriers keeping them apart?

2. In the city of Colora, artist Tristin Periwinkle has made his name thanks to magic paint that allows his landscapes and animals to come to life. But when rival artist Orvin Brown steals the paint and creates a monster that threatens the lives of everyone else in Colora, it's up to Tristin to save the day. Also, frogs.

3. Design guru Oliver Stuart regrets taking the job decorating Lady Pertwhistle's country house. Every color he suggests is wrong, blue is so last season, and "Dark is the wrong color of night." He's ready to quit--until he meets Lord Pertwhistle. Trying to balance an impossible client and a new romance, can Oliver find the perfect hue for the drawing room? Or is pink the wrong color of butch?

4. Trudy's new play about life on the bright side of the moon offends two of the lesser gods who obstruct her production with minor plagues in the form of large black spiders which are impossible to kill and intermittent bouts of irrational lust for the guy who plays "Waiter."

5. Danger and romance galore await students at Polaris Academy, the most northerly art school in the world, when a giant floe unexpectedly breaks away and the entire "solstice ice-scape" painting class heads toward the pole. Will this band of misfits and geniuses keep the igloo warm together, or will they argue over the color of ice until they freeze?

6. When Jedi master Yoda takes over the Jeopardy! franchise, questions and answers turn inside out and ratings plummet. Can the producers right the sinking ship before Yoda turns to the Dark Side to recover his place in prime-time?


Original Version

Dear Evil Editor:

Following is my query letter for Dark is the Wrong Color of Night, a humerous fantasy. [Whether you mean a funny fantasy or a fantasy about an arm bone, a typo in the first sentence is never good.] [Actually, while humorous fantasies are a dime a dozen, a humerus fantasy would be truly original. An archaeologist on a dig in Britain finds Merlin's humerus and uses it to destroy the world or to get chicks. A bullied kid finds a magical humerus and uses it to make his tormentors pay. There are a thousand ways to go. I'm considering assigning a humerus writing exercise.] The title comes from the fact that everything in the novel, people's names, the city's name, the clothes people wear, all relate in some way to a specific color. [For instance, night is the specific color dark.] [I considered the possibility that this paragraph wasn't part of the query, and was here only to explain the title, but it's the only place that mentions the title, so we'll assume it's part of the query.]

When Merlin Tristin Periwinkle's license to practice Magic is revoked by the Magician's Union both for flubbing a spell--which exposed the Mayor's affair with his cook--and filling the courtroom with frogs during the ensuing trial, he thinks his life is over. But it's only just beginning [, for he now wields the enchanted humerus of Magenta].

Returning to his previous occupation as an artist, Tristin is certain he has an advantage. His newly amended license allows him to both purchase and use already enchanted items, such as paint. Now he's able to paint landscapes and animals that come to life. But only if the paint cooperates and he doesn't lose his voice. [Why would he lose his voice? Also, if you're not going to tell us what losing his voice has to do with it, better not to mention it at all.] [Also, if Tristin isn't the only person who can purchase magic paint, the world would be filling up with painted landscapes that would be on top of each other.] [What happens if you get a map of the Earth and paint water all over it with magic paint? Does everyone drown? If you paint a horse and it comes to life, is it the size of a real horse or the size it was on the canvas? Or is it alive in the canvas?]

Though eventually Tristin succeeds in making a name for himself, [As an artist? If the pig you painted becomes a living pig, is the pig considered a work of art? Or a source of bacon?] not everyone rejoices at his success. One artist in particular, Orvin Brown, craves that fame for himself and will do anything to get it, including stealing the magic paint. But Orvin is ill-equipped to handle such a fickle, troublesome substance and makes some grievous errors. When he mixes Magic paint with normal paint, he creates a monster that threatens not only his life, but the lives of everyone in Colora. Unable to handle the monster himself, he turns to Tristin for help.

Now, hounded by a Magic Inspector intent on arresting him for the illegal use of Magic, Tristin and Orvin must unite to destroy the rampaging painting before Colora is destroyed for the eighth, and possibly final, time. [Should that be "arresting them"? If not, it should be, Tristin must unite with Orvin. Actually, it probably should be Orvin must unite with Tristin. Who does the inspector want to arrest? Seems to me Orvin is the one who illegally used magic.]


Notes

Explaining the title, you said the city's name related to a specific color. But Colora doesn't sound especially specific. (Unless we're talking about a specific disease.) Also, what's this about the people's clothes relating to specific colors? Do Orvin and everyone in his family wear only brown clothes? Are there people stuck wearing nothing but lime green?

Speaking of the title, must I point out the obvious, namely that dark is the right color of night?

It would help to know the intended audience. As described, it seems like a book for kids, except for the part about the mayor's affair with the cook. Will adults go for a book in which everyone's last name is a color in the city of Colora? Or will they think it's kind of lame?

On the other hand, everyone's last name is a color in the board game Clue and adults play that. Maybe you could change Brown and Periwinkle to Colonel Mustard and Professor Plum, and get some cross-over sales.

Am I the only one here who had a thing for Miss Scarlet when he was a teenager? Miss Scarlet in the billiard room with the rope. Mmmm.


Selected Comments

Anonymous said...Miss Scarlet was a he? I didn't have a clue.


talpianna said...Obviously a humerus fantasy is a story about a funnybone.

I cannot possibly care about the fate of a character named Periwinkle. He sounds like one of the fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream.


Dave F. said...I never pick on a title but "Dark is the Wrong Color of Night" sounds like a vampire novel or some other evil denizen of hades novel. The title doesn't sound like the title for a light-hearted romantic comedy. Oh wait, this isn't romance, either. So I am puzzled. You need a title to match the story. Acrylic Apocalypse, Water-Color Witch Wars, Impasto Devilment, Ochre Ogres, Fuchsia Fiends or something like that.


pjd said...I think it would be a really humorous story if Tristan's 5-year-old nephew got hold of the magic paints. Five-year olds have an interesting artistic take on perspective. For example, a four-legged dog becomes an in-line dog. Suppose that came to life and tried to chase an in-line cat. Talk about funny.

By the way, great work on the GTPs.

Now, on the query: Author, I was turned off by the name "Colora" and found I couldn't take the query seriously after that. I don't much get into stories where the gimmick is its reason for being, and it seems this story exists specifically for the author's titillation with word play around color. Plus, Colora is, well, as EE says, lame. Also too close to cholera, which is a gross disease. You could change it to Dyearrhea perhaps. Or Pigmentia.

And that typo on humerous needs to be fixed. I think you meant huemorous.


benwah said...I, too, am confused about the genre. Assuming this isn't an anatomy treatise, I think I've figured it out:

It's a black comedy written in purple prose by a yellow journalist warning of the red menace.


Anonymous said...EE - Will you be my Valentine? I spewed Fresca all over my desk reading that first paragraph. You're brilliant and funny. You're simply the best.


Anonymous said...EE- will you be my Valentine? I inhaled cola (which is far more painful and potentially life-threatening than a Fresca spew) when I read your very humerous words in blue today!


Evil Editor said...How do I choose between anonymous and anonymous? Can I be everyone's Valentine?


Robin S. said...No. You can't.


Brenda Bradshaw said...You think every Valentine will allow you to have the rope on the pool table, plus beg for the candlestick too? You should set a higher bar, darling.


Phoenix said...Author: I, too, will assume that the first paragraph is instructional text, and that your real query includes the title, word count and genre.
So, I like the spell flubbing, which shows some characterization, but I'm not clear about the frogs incident. Did Tristin do it on accident or purpose -- there's a huge character difference in those choices that the query doesn't clarify.

If artist was his previous occupation, what is he at the beginning? Seer? Merlin? Are those occupations? I'm assuming his amended license gives him FEWER rights, so wouldn't he have been able to use magic paint when he was an artist before? Why does he seem able to do something more now? And, like EE, I didn't understand the inclusion of the voice bit.

I'm not clear on Orvin and Tristin's relationship. Orvin is jealous of Tris' success, yes, but we don't get a clear idea why "must unite" becomes such a priority plot point. What makes it difficult for them to unite? Orvin has already set aside his jealous feelings by reaching out to Tris for help. And now we have two inept magicians as MCs.

There are some cute bits and turns of phrases here (troublesome substance; destroyed for the eighth, and possibly final, time) IF this is intended for the tween crowd. If it's geared toward adults, there might be a way to make it work, but I don't think this query, as is, will do it. It feels too slight and not really funny enough.

As for the title, "dark," of course, isn't a color at all. For a literary novel without color-coded characters, I could seriously see this as a great title. But for a comic novel where the color conceit is so blatant, it doesn't really seem to work.


Kim Richards said...It seems with so many comments including questions and the original post also asking questions that you're at least interested in finding out. Otherwise why ask?

If you're wondering, then perhaps the query is doing its job by drumming up interest?


Phoenix said...Hi Kim: I can only answer for myself, but I ask questions because that's a helpful critique tool. And, at some level, beyond the bargain psychiatry and flirting and reminiscing you'll find here, this is a critique site. I think. I show interest because I hope when I submit something to this blog, others will do the courtesy to show interest in my stuff. And because I like the people who frequent here.

An agent or editor has no such agenda.

A query needs to raise the right kinds of questions with the right person. If the question raised is, "Wow, I didn't see that coming! That's terrific -- I wonder how THAT plot line gets resolved?" then that query has indeed done its job and a request for pages will soon follow. If the question is, "Why is this character doing X when what I just read two sentences before indicates he should be doing Y?" then the query is likely, right at that point, to be deep sixed.

However, the key is getting the right person asking the right questions. That's why lots of feedback is helpful. What I don't "get" or like, one of the other minions may well fall in love with. But even in the latter case, it never hurts to close up gaps in logic or to otherwise tidy up the writing. And figuring out where that needs to happen is, I think, why people submit their work here. They want their baby to be its strongest and looking its best when it goes out alone into the world.


blank said...Generally when people ask questions of submitted work here, they are actually intending to help the writer (even if sometimes things can trip into hilarity). It's a method of critique. It highlights areas where the reader was confused or skeptical. It is less dogmatic than other methods of critique as it allows the writer to consider their own ways of solving the problem. If the writer is willing to listen.


Anonymous said...Honestly? I like it. Sure, it needs work, but who doesn’t? What I don’t like is the circus this place is. Evil Editor: The Jerry Springier of the Writer’s Set.


Evil Psychiatrist samd...Jerry Springier? This is Evil Editor's personal journal, fashioned for his own entertainment, and that of anyone who cares to partake. I can't imagine what anyone who doesn't care for it is doing here when there are millions of other blogs, web sites, DVDs, books, etc. Better to find something you enjoy than to suffer something you don't. That'll be $85.


pjd said...Thank you for clearly articulating what makes this site so worth the time I spend here. I didn't really get it until you used the word "circus."

Jerry Springier? What makes a person springy, and what would make him springier? Hmm. Food for thought.


Robin S. said...I agree with evil psychiatrist and with phoenix and I realize if you’ve read anything other than a few paragraphs of the comments here, that comes as no surprise. Works for me.

There's a lot of fun nonsense going on here and it works in more than one way. It works because it's fun nonsense and pure pleasure to play around with people you like and enjoy, even if it's only their on-blog selves you know. Maybe you have to be around a while to see it, to understand it's more than the sum of its parts, I don't know, but it's there, and it's good stuff.

As for the questions, sowing thoughtful questions, or simply tossing intelligent thoughts out for consideration, rewards writers (that don’t mind listening a little) with insights - provokes fresh looks and sometimes painfully honest appraisals. And here, it’s done with a sense of humor.

Of course some of the comments are off the mark. Some comments anywhere are off the mark.

Ever had a perfect corporate day?

Ever agreed with everyone you spoke with on a given day? If so, you live alone (or you’ve somehow managed to surround yourself with people who’ve decided they’d better not disagree with you, each with and for their own reasons).

I play around here because it’s a great place to play around, but I’m also intensely interested in the reason I showed up here in the first place – getting some feedback and some advice, just enough, not too much, on writing.

I have my own opinions about the traditional critique group – I’m not fond of them. If I wanted to sound and write like everyone else, I’d join one. Go do it. Have a big time.

Meanwhile, I’ll be here at Jerry ‘Springier’s’ (by the way, when you want to be an anonymous high-handed asshole, checking your spelling is quite useful – makes you look like less of a pathetic circus-hating fool if you can stand back and say, “See, I was right, I was right, and I didn’t even spell anything incorrectly or say fuck a lot, or any at all, like that one bitch on there does, and you know, bad words are a mark of an insipid mind….blah blah fucking blah”. Then you look less like the chick who makes what’s supposed to be a really good and cutting exit line at a party, and she stalks off all proud of herself, but there’s toilet paper stuck to her shoe and everybody enjoys laughing at her because she’s a bitch with an attitude, and uh, toilet paper running behind her).

Evil Editor Classics

Guess the Plot

Loading . . . Please Wait

1. The instant longshoreman Joe Dentmore saw the dude and the dame in the white coats running toward his forklift, he figured -- mad scientists! And how right he was! They're attempting to take over the world with the aid of a woman whose outfits scandalously fall off at critical moments. Can Joe stop them, or must he call in Team X97Z -- the zombie axemen?

2. Prayers finds herself trapped in a tower after eloping with Eagle, a reckless warrior. She is rescued by a renowned gypsy adventuress (who has finally found in Sorgaard a man worthy of her attention). Meanwhile, Eagle is betrayed by Prayers's cousin, a mercenary in the employ of Alexey Nikolayevsky, who has a secret grudge to settle against Sorgaard. Okay, okay, none of that really happens.

3. Karen is trying to break up, but for Todd, this does not compute. As she rants, he whaps himself upside the head and a small door creaks open, revealing a slot. He pops out the old disk, inserts a new one, and starts reformatting his brain. This is exactly what she was talking about! His needs always come before hers!

4. Despite legions of armed military, no beans can leave the coffee warehouses of Colombia. The Sisters of Platitude are saving the world from moral decrepitude, which Dr. Gus "Chicken Face" Lombardi proved is caused by coffee (his analysis produced a chi square statistic that was significant to the .04% level). This will be the worst day of General Rodriguez's life.

5. Technophobe Lulu Nelson goes crazy when her cell phone runs completely down, her PC crashes, her power is shut off, and her boyfriend tells her he's postponing their wedding. After being accused of taking part in a vicious crime spree, Lulu is arrested. But she falls in love with her bail bondsman, who turns out to be a video game addict.

6. Washington, DC madam Scarlett D'Onofrio loves her android employees. Indistinguishable from real girls, they don't get VD, they don't sleep or eat, and they always turn in 100% of the client fees. When Genevieve locks up during a routine wireless firmware update, however, Scarlett discovers her brothel has been hacked by the KGB, who've been listening in on Washington's most sensitive conversations.



Original Version

Dear Agent,

Please consider reviewing LOADING...PLEASE WAIT (98,124 words, co-authored), cutting-edge women's fiction layered over a fantasy romantic adventure.

More simply put, LOADING is the story of two women who share two worlds, told two ways.

In the virtual world of Epoch of Epics (story told in standard narrative), [I hate it when I'm lost before the first comma.] a young noblewoman named "Prayers" (Preces) [Why is Prayers in quotation marks and Preces in parentheses? Which one is her name?] finds herself abandoned in an unfamiliar tower after eloping with Eagle, a reckless warrior who has been living in her parents’ manor. [When your job title is "warrior," it's kind of wussy to be living on your girlfriend's father's manor. Though I suppose it's nice to have the butler bring you scones and tea every morning before you head off to battle barbarians.] She is rescued by her friend Lyres, a renowned gypsy adventuress who has finally found in the itinerant Sorgaard a man worthy of her sincere attention. Meanwhile, Eagle is betrayed by Preces’ [("Prayers'")] cousin Kent, a mercenary in the employ of the powerful Duke Alexey Nikolayevsky, who has a secret grudge to settle against Sorgaard. [Get rid of some of these characters so I don't need to make a chart.]

In the real world (story told via email exchange), "Preces" is 42-year old Beth, a chatty, soft-hearted executive wife in Virginia, whose virtual lover, "Eagle," [She has a virtual lover in the real world who has the same name as her real lover in the virtual world?] is her son's best friend. Linda, a successful Los Angeles attorney and lightly cynical single mom, is "Lyres," [Damn. Looks like I need a chart after all.

Virtual World......Standard Narrative......."Prayers"......(Preces).....Lyres
Real World...........Email Exchange........."Preces".........Beth..........Linda]

[Nope, didn't help. Possibly because I failed to include Kent, Sorgaard, Eagle, Beth's son's best friend, and Duke Alexey Nikolayevsky.] and her virtual flirtation with "Sorgaard" has provoked an invitation to meet his creator face-to-face, behind the back of her increasingly resentful non-player fiancé. [Finally, a character I can sympathize with.] At first neatly separated, their real and virtual relationships gradually tangle, dragging Beth and Linda into confrontations with addiction, denial, obsession and each other. [I was once in a game of Clue where someone shot someone else for lying about whether he had the Billiard Room card.]

Electronic relationship is a subject about which I've published several academic papers (see my Auburn University faculty webpage, linked at the very bottom of this email), and in which there is an exponentially-growing interest. According to the Pew Internet Project, 70 percent of American adult women are online; [Did that project survey real women, or virtual women (most of whom I suspect are teenage boys)?] email correspondence with friends and family, like that between Beth and Linda, is the dominant use. [Unlike American adult men, whose dominant use is porn.] While the fantasy subplot is accessible to anyone with imagination, it offers a special hook for the 6-million-and-counting female gamers worldwide; stereotypes notwithstanding, women aged 35-49 are the single largest demographic in online gaming, [I find that hard to believe.] and fully 60 percent of college women in 2003 were regular online role-players (Nielsen/Net Ratings). [Which explains why 60 percent of college men have to settle for porn these days.] A novel about women's interactions -- online, in the real world, and in the space between -- is cutting-edge now, but headed for the mainstream as computer-mediated communication increasingly becomes the norm.

When I am not teaching Auburn undergrads or indulging my new-found passion for fiction-writing (a prequel to LOADING is outlined and the first chapter complete), I'm engrossed in raising my nine children -- three of whom [are virtual children, and three of whom are active gamers [(Gary plays my studly masseur, Lance plays my buff tennis instructor, and little Joey plays Brad Pitt in my current game, Sim City 9: Rule of the Amazons)]. Co-author ___________, a writer whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and other periodicals, teaches grant-writing at UCLA. Like Beth and Linda, we met in the context of an online role-playing game and have never spoken or met face-to-face; we like to imagine our first-time meeting as an Oprah-worthy promotional event. [And it will be, when it turns out that "Linda" is actually twelve-year-old Jimmy Landry and a few of his buddies.]

Thank you for your time and consideration, and I look forward to sending you more of LOADING...PLEASE WAIT.

Sincerely,


Notes

I believe that those who are into role playing would rather role play than read about the role-playing adventures dreamed up by fictional role players. Thus if a large portion of your book is the story of Sorgaard, Eagle and the Duke (Hey, that would make a catchy song title), we're in trouble.

Your story as I see it is about Linda (whose boyfriend is jealous of the time she spends in online role playing; to keep him from blowing his top, she doesn't tell him she's going off to Montana to meet a guy she met playing Epoch of Epics), and Beth, who's in the same E of E game, but unaware that her virtual lover, whom she's actually falling for, is her kid's best friend. These are the characters people want to read about. Those who want to read about Sorgaard and "Prayers" would rather you wrote a fantasy book about Sorgaard and "Prayers."

Dump the paragraph that isn't real, rework the one that is real so that it involves us in the conflicts of the characters (perhaps a paragraph about Beth's situation, a paragraph about Linda's, and a paragraph about the obsession/addiction/entanglement), and now you won't have to waste a huge paragraph convincing us there's a market for this. Unfortunately, I suspect too much of your plot exists only in the minds of Beth and Linda, and while fascinating to them, will be no more interesting to readers than the other ten million plots unfolding in online role playing games right now.

I could be wrong about that, but if not, it's not the end of the world; you'll just need to overhaul the book so that it focuses on the real world.


Selected Comments

Kalynne Pudner said...That was absolutely the most helpful response I've ever gotten to that query, including those from agents who requested partials and fulls. Well, ok, "full" singular.

You're not really evil after all, are you? (Though I rather suspect you'll respond to this comment with something nasty, just to prove me wrong.)

Thanks!


Sarah said...Hi Kalynne,

You think we minions are all masochistic and that's why we hang with the Evil Overlord? Welcome to the party!

I don't have much to add to EE's summation on your query. I think the real drama does lie in how the Second Life gaming affects the real world of these people. It doesn't hurt to add in the surprises of who they really are - like the kid's best friend.

Second Life stuff has appeared in TV shows recently and I personally think it was boring. I think they tried too hard to get across the 'cool' aspect of the virtual world without delving into the psychological impact on the real world.

And those of us who prefer to pick up a book would rather read about how this virtual living is screwing up your real life.

I had a girlfriend once who had an affair online. She found it wasn't very exciting after all. At least that's what she said when I looked over her shoulder. Um, yeah.

Anyway. Good luck with this query. I think you really have an interesting book in there. And if you align the query more with the real life aspects, then you can lose the justificaiton for writing the book (which is a very long paragraph full of boring statistics).


December/Stacia said...So, if I have this straight, Prayers is actually the virtual character of Beth, and her story is the one Beth is playing? But Eagle is cheating on her with Linda in the real world?

Sounds kind of like that Will Ferrel movie I haven't seen yet. And maybe a little like that "Mazes and Monsters" movie with Tom Hanks years and year ago. Or "The Eight" (as I understood it, I've never read it). I'm not saying that to make you think your idea is old-hat or cliche at all, just that there might be other, simpler ways to describe the plot. It's really about the virtual and real worlds bleeding together, right, and people who get so caught up in it they can't tell where one ends and another begins?

I'd cut all the stuff where you call your book "cutting-edge", personally.


Anonymous said...The query needs work, but this is a really good idea. I'm seeing it as a more complex update of You've Got Mail, in a world that's moved past silly AOL icons and onto more nuanced interactions with a growing virtualization of the real world.

I've considered the real/virtual life concept myself, with a more hardcore, typically male, gaming crowd and it always came out too Chuck Palahniuk for my writing style(not to mention my writing ability). You seem to have a lighter style going here, but I think I might still be interested in checking this out.

Also, you've probably come across this in your research, but just on the off chance you haven't you might find this site interesting. It's called the Daedalus Project - a sociology graduate student's quite successful attempt to question and document relationships in online RPGS:

http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archi...

Best of luck!


Phoenix said...What EE said, and ...

You're too close to academia. Stats and demographics are essential for a non-fiction proposal, but do not belong in a fiction query. An agent/publisher will not really care what the audience makeup is if the story is engaging and saleable. What some will care about -- and may even ask about -- is how you plan on reaching that audience. In other words, what your promotional plans are. How many of that potential audience can you personally reach?

Plus, your stats don't really support your conclusion, do they? There's a bit of a flaw in the logic there. An interest in gaming doesn't necessarily translate into a trend for your type of book. Millions of women watch, bet on, and otherwise participate in football and baseball events, but how many women's fiction or romance novels revolve around these sports?

Also, remember that at this point you're selling the book, not you. Keep the personal stuff short and relevant. For instance, what do your nine children have to do with writing about 42-year-old women? In fact, that could be a red flag that you have a heavy personal workload and may not be able to hit your deadlines. You don't want to bias an agent right off!

And if it's co-authored, with equal responsibilities, then give yourselves equal billing. If I were your co-author, I'd be a bit ticked off at the way this is written with most of the emphasis on you. But then, I'm something of a control freak :o)

No need to cite your word count to the word. Rounding to 98,000 is fine.

On a personal level, as someone who fits squarely in your demographic target, I would be concerned that the book has too much of a dual personality. That as soon as I got interested in either the role-playing or the real-playing storyline, I'd be switched over to the other storyline. Although, while I'm an avid fantasy reader/writer, the fantasy bit is kinda ho-hum to me as presented here. And since I don't read much chick lit, the real story isn't particularly compelling to me either.


Kalynne Pudner said...Anonymous - What I wouldn't give if you turned out to be an agent! That is EXACTLY the premise (Sarah puts it well with "screwing up your real life"...though there is some good that comes out of it). And the Daedalus project site is a gold mine; I'd heard vague reports of something like it from the folks upstairs in Sociology, but no one had the actual name.

Thanks, everyone, for the helpful feedback. I was terrified of doing this, but I'm so much better off. Kind of like getting a root canal, but less painful. And I don't have a Lortab prescription to show for it.

(Oh, and Phoenix...she's cool with the query attribution. It was an 80-20 writing split.)


Sarah said..."she's cool with the query attribution. It was an 80-20 writing split"

That's all well and good for you and her, but what does it look like to the editor/agent reading your query?

EE - what do you think about getting a co-author query that focuses so much on one author?


Evil Editor said...It could sound like the person who offered to write the query is trying to squeeze the other one out. But if we get rid of the paragraph of stats and the nine kids, the info split will be close to even on the authors. It's best if both authors sign the query. Is the 80/20 split in work going to translate to an 80/20 split in profits when this becomes a major bestseller? Why, she doesn't even deserve 20%. She barely did anything. Squeeze her out now, Kalynne, or I sense trouble in the future.


Dave F. said...As for co-authors...Think about it from the agents POV. What extras are going to go into the contracts to satisfy each author? What extra work does the agent have to do in preparing a contract? Do they have to issue two royalty checks? Two bills? Double everything? Remember, it's business for the agent and publisher.


Evil Editor said...Which is not to dissuade you; anthologies get published with many authors. Novel Deviations has 88 authors.


 Phoenix said...Well, yeah, but there were, ahem, no advances or royalties to consider there.

Still, my stuff has been in multi-authored anthologies where both the advance and royalties were paid unequally based on word counts of each published story. I never worry about the bookkeeping as long as the checks keep coming in. :o)


Evil Editor said...It is about time the contributors to the Novel Deviations books started sharing in the spoils. You each owe me about $2.50.


Robin S. said...Hi Kalynne, I think the background and setup for your story is really interesting. I think it’s even more interesting from the perspective of the basic human need for connection, setting aside where the fulfillment of that need takes place. Not discounting the method and place, but thinking about it from a universal perspective - the decision on what is or isn’t real to a human being who’s searching for congress, and thus for meaning. Whether through fantasy or reality, that feeling of connection is of paramount importance.

I’m wondering if mentioning this commonality would work well in your query. (It may already be there, and I’ve missed it. If so, sorry! I’m thinking of your storyline from this perspective.)


Jon Pumpkin said...I just hope the novel doesn't start with a scene in the virtual and then surprise! it's not real.


Xenith said...The query strikes me as being a little wordy, in a way that reminds me of academic writing e.g

"More simply put," doesn't add anything here and it's not really applicable.

"Electronic relationship is a subject about which I've published several academic papers" could be "I've published several academic papers on electronic relationships".

Tighten it up, you'll lose less word, make it more attention getting and the agent is less likely to worry that the novel sounds like an academic paper :)


talpianna said...Kalynne, since the writing split is so wide, perhaps your collaborator should be referred to as a "contributor" rather than a co-author? Though I don't know that that would help sell the book.

I must say that your query left me VERY confused about exactly who was doing what to/with whom (and where), which makes me wonder if I'd find the book even more confusing.

And I don't know whether this matters to anyone but me, but the differences in the names bug me, as they don't seem to belong to the same culture. Like Tolkien, I am an admirer of the linguistic aesthetic--all names in the same culture should be Latinate, or Scandinavian, or Hindi, or modern English, and not a mixture unless they are from different backgrounds and/or speak different languages.

But I'm not the best person to advise you on the quality of the story, as I don't play RPGs and don't care for chick lit. Give me Tolkien or Jayne Ann Krentz any time--but not in combination!


Polenth said...The query didn't read to me like it was written by someone who plays online roleplaying games. Later you say you do, but you might have lost the gamer agent/editor before that part.

The thing that puts me off is the lack of a community in the game. It sounded more like the main characters were involved in an online dating site. Their world is filled with single people looking for love. They lacked friends in the game outside of their love interests. It could be the stable boy is played by a grandmother that Beth goes to for advice. There might be others in the adventuring group who are just friends (many of which are probably male). There could be real life couples and families playing the game together.

You're not going to put every detail in the query, but just a hint of the wider community would make it more believable.


writtenwyrdd said...Too much time spent on academic creds, too little time explaining the actual story. As EE points out, it's pretty confusing what is going on. I gather that you have two worlds, the role-playing world and the real world, and then hilarity (or at least your story) ensues as these roles overlap. I think that you need to focus on showing us why this is something we want to read, not explain how you are qualified to write it. To put it plainly, you don't need to murder someone to write a murder story, so that info is irrelevant.

Good luck with the revisions. These letters are difficult.


author of "the lake murders" said...you don't need to murder someone to write a murder story.  You don't? Uh-oh.


Kalynne Pudner said...I don't know whether anyone is hanging around these comments anymore, or if there's some other forum for this, but any and all critique of the reworked query would be gratefully received:

LOADING...PLEASE WAIT (98,000 words) is a co-authored novel without precedent but with cultural relevance, as it chronicles the friendship of two very different women, in both the real contemporary world and a virtual medieval world.

Beth is a soft-hearted, somewhat air-headed executive wife unhappily facing the prospect of an empty nest; Linda is a successful attorney on the opposite coast, a single mom to whom the quiet and solitude of an empty nest sounds more like a promise than a threat. They met and formed an intimate friendship as characters in an online role-playing game: Beth as "Preces," a bright but devoutly religious teenaged noblewoman, and Linda as "Lyres," a gypsy warrior with a reputation.

LOADING opens in the virtual world, where Preces awakes to find herself abandoned in a tower after eloping with "Eagle" (the avatar of Beth's son's best friend). She is rescued by Lyres, whose adventures - especially those involving an itinerant chemist named "Sorgaard" - comprise the virtual world story line.

Chapters of virtual world fantasy are interspersed between Beth and Linda's email correspondence. These prolonged exchanges, light and chatty at the outset, gradually reveal secret tragedies, powerful obsessions and paralyzing fears that have put their real and virtual worlds on a collision course.

Electronic relationship is a subject about which I've published several academic papers; I see LOADING as an opportunity to explore some of the salient issues in a more entertaining and compelling way. Co-author XXXXX, herself a highly accomplished gamer, is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and other periodicals. Like Beth and Linda, we met in the context of an online role-playing game and have never spoken nor met face-to-face; we like to imagine our initial meeting as an Oprah-worthy promotional event.

The pages pasted below are from the end of the first virtual world fantasy chapter and the beginning of the email exchange, to give you a flavor of both as well as the transition between them.

My contact information can be found at the very end of the email. Thank you for your time, and I look forward to sending you more of LOADING...PLEASE WAIT.


Anonymous said...Here's my cold cruel world view of this. Multiple authors, multiple story lines, multiple genres, characters with real and imaginary identities, real and imaginary relationships, etc etc. You lost my attention about halfway through that query. Sounds like a mish-mash. Being without precedent is kind of a warning that there is likely to be no discernible way to market the book, even if it is a bright idea.

Will this appeal to someone who is devoted to the virtual world thing? I have no idea. I might find your fantasy world plot etc interesting if it was well written as a fantasy novel in which the world is "real". That would be my genre. But I'm not the least bit interested in reading about two women who sit on opposite coasts banging on their computers and forming an intimate virtual bla bla bla etc etc.

That title makes it sound like much of the book is really scene after scene spent waiting for your slow-ass old Windows computer to do something. Which makes me think you should come up with a new title because waiting for a computer is really nobody's idea of a good time.


mb said...Kalynne,

I would drop the "without precedent" line (it's just asking for someone to think of a precedent), and the "Oprah-worthy moment," and I would say your characters "meet (present tense) rather than "met" to match the rest of the synopsis. Aside from those nitpicks, I think your rewrite is much clearer than the last version and gets closer to the heart of your story. Good for you for taking criticism so well!


Phoenix said...Hi Kalynne; Better, but I think you still need to leave the hype at home and make your description of the story compelling of itself. Also, no need to describe the way the chapters lay. And certainly do not send the last part of Ch 1 and the first part of Ch 2. I understand what you want to demonstrate, but agents will either like your idea from the query and first sample pages and want to see more or they won't. The rule is to send the first 5, 10, whatever number of pages, consecutive, starting from page 1.

And your contact info should come either at the top of the email or right after your query text and before the sample pages. Treat the query letter the same as you would any business letter. These are really common mistakes (believe me, I've made just about every mistake in the book myself!), but they do mark you as an amateur and you want to come across as a writing professional.

I think the query still needs to focus more on what happens in the book. And the number of characters mentioned by name here simply confuses the reader -- info overload. FWIW, I've taken a stab at separating the theory from the story:

Online role-playing adventurers Beth and Linda discover that what began as a simple way to escape the drudgery of middle age has taken a dark and sinister turn. Aspects of the virtual game have begun to infiltrate their real lives -- catching them up in a modern-day psychosis and putting their real and virtual worlds on a collision course.

Beth is a soft-hearted, somewhat air-headed executive wife unhappily facing the prospect of an empty nest. Linda is a successful attorney on the opposite coast; a single mom who can't wait for the quiet and solitude an empty nest promises. The fast alliance their gaming characters form in the virtual medieval world quickly translates into a virtual friendship in the real world. Before long, the game and their friendship consume them to the exclusion of friends, family and common sense.

When her son's best friend enters the game as Beth's virtual lover and Linda's virtual love interest begins pressuring her to meet in real life, the women turn to one another for support, only to learn that separating the game from reality will take more strength and conviction than either woman possesses alone. Their emails to one another begin devolving into confessions of secret tragedies, powerful obsessions and paralyzing fears. And when X happens, Beth and Linda must find the same courage and resiliency their online characters demonstrate or Y will surely come about.

LOADING...PLEASE WAIT is complete at 98,000 words. Co-author Kalynne Pudner has published several academic papers about electronic relationships. Co-author XXXXX, herself a highly accomplished gamer, is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and other periodicals. Like Beth and Linda, we met while playing an online role-playing game and have never spoken nor met face-to-face.

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to sending you more of LOADING...PLEASE WAIT.


Robin S. said...Phoenix- I swear I truly believe you could make a damn good amount of money writing query letters for authors-in-distress.

(That includes helping me, please.)


Sarah said...Phoenix - you might want to consider writing queries for money. You're really good!
The thing that Phoenix does well here is to simplify the query and concentrate on the 2 MC's.

Although your new query is much better, it is still confusing and introduces too many players. I especially don't like the wife's son's mother's granddaughter's next door neighbor's kind of thing. Means I have to think.


Kalynne Pudner said...Okay, I think I've got it this time (thanks to Phoenix, whom I pretty much copied, pasting the actual details of the story):

Two women who've never met, and probably wouldn't like each other if they did, find that what began as online fun is now threatening to shatter their lives, and they have only each other for support.

Beth is a soft-hearted, somewhat air-headed executive wife whose teenaged son introduces her to "Epoch of Epics" to ward off the impending boredom of an empty nest. Linda is a successful attorney and single mom relieving the stress of her overbooked life through the virtual adventures of a gypsy with a reputation. A series of coincidences has forged an alliance between their characters, so when Beth decides to quit the game, they translate their virtual-world friendship into a real one via email.

But Epoch of Epics has become more than a harmless pastime, putting real and virtual worlds on a collision course. A real-life rumor links Beth and her virtual lover — who turns out to be her son's best friend. A virtual flirtation leads Linda to a real-life rendezvous behind the back of her increasingly resentful fiancé. A mysterious virtual-world stranger reveals a startling degree of real-world familiarity with both women. Within the space of a single year, Beth and Linda must come to grips with obsession, addiction, paralyzing fear, a secret tragedy...and the fundamental difference between reality and make-believe.

This difference is the premise of LOADING...PLEASE WAIT, a 98,000-word first novel by co-authors who, like Beth and Linda, have never met. Kalynne Hackney Pudner holds a Ph.D. in philosophy and has published several scholarly articles on the ethics of electronic relationship, while Sheryl G. Stuart, herself a highly accomplished gamer, is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times and other periodicals.

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to sending you more of LOADING...PLEASE WAIT.

Evil Editor and Hannibal Lecter Get Snowed In

Vacation season is over. Perhaps now people will resume working on their writing careers, and submitting their queries and openings to Evil Editor. If not, perhaps it's time to shut this blog down and start Evil Sports Fan or Evil Advice Columnist. Or maybe moving from Blogger to Tumblr would bring in new blood. In any case, when there's nothing to do, you can't beat watching an old movie.

Evil Editor Meets Sherlock Holmes

Face-Lift 1068

Guess the Plot

Burden

1. The woes of Skippy the toy poodle, who must share his humans and his sofa with the laziest, most idiotic, and annoying being on earth -- Antoine, the calico cat. Also, an invasion of mice.
 
2. Hedgely inherits a farm in Ohio from Uncle Dave. Sounds good, but it turns out to be the former site of an Indian village, now haunted by 483 angry ghosts.

3. The lives, loves, and seething hatreds of the people of Burden, North Dakota are explored in this rather rambling epic.

4. Forty-year-old Sally Heart finds her life enriched when she opens her home and her heart to the dying mother she never knew. Hard-partying Todd Singer learns the value of life and love when his latest one-night stand shows up at his office to say she may or may not have HIV, but she is definitely pregnant. Lisa Digger finally gives in to her son's relentless begging for a puppy, and when he soon loses interest she finds she just might be a dog person after all. Bullshit ... total bullshit.

5. No burden is he to bear. He ain't heavy. He's my broth-- . . . Unnghh. Unnnnngggghhhh, Jesus Christ, he's heavy. Let's leave him here.

6. Ryder learns that the king she has served for sixteen years wasn't the rightful heir. So she sets out to raise an army and take him down. If she fails, all her recruits will be severely punished or killed. Can she live with that . . . Burden?



Original Version

Dear Agent,

Ryder is both the daughter of the king's seneschal and a powerful mage. Waiting for her are any [any?] easy job as King Marek's bodyguard and a comfortable castle life. But when she discovers that Marek stole the throne from his cousin, the rightful heir Caerus, she realizes that she should be fighting Marek, not serving him.

[Caerus: Hey, where's my throne?

Marek: I stole it. Which, as you know, makes me king.

Caerus: Rats.]

Ryder publicly denounces Marek and vows justice. She sets out to find Caerus and raise a secret army to take on Marek's soldiers. [Wouldn't it be easier to raise a secret army if she didn't publicly denounce Marek and vow justice?

Marek: Where's my mage? 

Adviser: She's down in the public square, denouncing you and vowing justice.

Marek: Chain her to the wall in the dungeon.]

[I like guessing at a book's dialogue. How'm I doing?]

But Caerus hasn't been seen in sixteen years and Ryder faces a widespread distrust of all things magical- like her. And with each new recruit, there is one more person who will be severely punished if Ryder fails.

[Ryder: I'm recruiting soldiers to dethrone the king.

Farmer: How many have you got so far?

Ryder: You'd be the first.

Farmer: Come back when you have 40,000. We'll talk.]

Too many good people will die for her cause, no matter the outcome. With so much loss necessary for her to win, she isn't so sure she can truly achieve victory. [How will things change if she achieves victory? How does her father, the king's seneschal feel about this? And why is Blogger telling me I spelled "seneschal" wrong?] As for Ryder herself, what could happen is clear: succeed, or die. Or both. [It seems to me that a powerful mage should be able to avoid death even if her mission fails. What are her powers? Can she become invisible? Turn into a bird? Transport to another kingdom? Or is her magic all illusions? I suppose if David Copperfield were chained in a dungeon that wasn't built by him and his staff, he'd have trouble escaping.]

BURDEN is my debut novel and is a 145,000 word fantasy. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,


Notes

If Ryder is a teenager, declare this YA.

Maybe Marek usurped the throne because Caerus was corrupt and evil. Maybe the kingdom is better off with Marek. If you tell us how bad things are, we'll better understand Ryder's motivation. I'd rather think her cause is to rescue her people from oppression than merely to see that the true heir gets what's his.

It took sixteen years for anyone to discover that Marek isn't the rightful heir? Or is Ryder the only one who didn't know this? Seems like the identity of the rightful heir would have been known to everyone. Why are they all putting up with a usurper?

A Film Classic from the Evil Editor Vault

Guess the Title

Below are seven descriptions of books about parenting/ relationships, and other crap like that, taken from their write-ups at Barnes and Noble dot com. Your job is to guess which of the given titles is the book's actual title.


1. The author can spell, do math, and run faster than your kids—and he is here to show you just how inferior your kids are. Why reward weakness and mediocrity with gold stars? No child is safe from the scrutiny and critical gaze of the world’s foremost authority on children’s crappy artwork.

What’s wrong with American kids?
I Am Better Than Your Kids
Why Your Kids Suck: A Manifesto
My Kid’s Okay; Your Kid Sucks
Your Kid is Worse at Art than Jackson Pollack


2. What kind of mother feeds her kids dinosaur chicken nuggets . . . three times a week? What kind of mother lets hand washing slide after using the toilet, as long as it was just Number One?

Parenting: Filth, Fat and…Ah, Who Gives a Shit.
How to raise a CEO.
When Did I Get Like This?
Rules for Redneck Mothers
Screw It: They'll Probably Turn Out OK


3. A hilarious take on that age-old problem: getting the beloved child to go to sleep.

Go the F*#K to Sleep.
Go To Sleep Or Spongebob Dies
Chloroform: The New Wonder Drug
Improved Parenting through the Wonders of Sedatives
Why Don't They Make Flintstones Sleeping Pills?


4. This amusing shower or new baby gift celebrates the ups and downs of breastfeeding and gives the rapidly growing number of breastfeeding moms something they can really use-a good laugh!

Milk Duds
You’re not alone – breastfeeding Does Suck.
Got Breast Milk?
Your Rack: More than a Man Magnet
If These Boobs Could Talk


5. Once the zigzagging hormones and endless, bleary-eyed exhaustion of the first year have worn off, you're left with the startling realization that your tiny, immobile bundle has become a rampaging toddler, complete with his or her very own, very forceful personality.

What to Expect When Your Toddlers Take Over
Adoption Agencies: It's Never too Late
Naptime is the New Happy Hour
Yes! Someone Will Still Adopt Him!
Why Isn't Daycare 24-7?


6. The Guy's Survival Guide to Getting Engaged and Married

Writing the Ironclad Prenup
Life Sentence
Yes, Dear
Hey, Let's Elope!
How to Get a Free Maid and Save Money on Dating


7. For all those who make an annual ritual of avoiding spring cleaning, liberation is at hand! Instead of arranging the stuff in your house to improve your inner harmony, let everything go to hell-and learn how to feel good about it.

Feng Sh*t
Mrs. V's Handy Household Hints
The Lazy Woman’s Guide to Insurance and Arson
The Tao of Housework
When You're Dead, No One Cares Whether You Dusted



Answers Below


Fake titles were submitted by Mister Furkles, Khazar-khum, Evil Editor, Anonymous, and Rachel6.


The actual titles are:

I Am Better Than Your Kids
When Did I Get Like This?
Go the F*#K to Sleep.
If These Boobs Could Talk
Naptime is the New Happy Hour
Life Sentence
Feng Sh*t

Evil Editor Classics

Guess the Plot

A Window of Oppor- 
tunity

1. Josh figured he might be a fry cook all his life. Then one day Debbie was sick and the manager handed Josh the headset for the drive-thru window.

2. Joe Smith has plans to ask Lucille to marry him. Their drive-in movie date goes so well, he decides to wait until the credits roll. Meanwhile, ten million giant glowing worm-things-from-space splat on the pavement and creep all over the car, leaving slime trails on the windshield that obscure the view. Has Joe missed . . . a window of opportunity?

3. 32 episodes based on real life in which various dilemmas present themselves and, for potty mouth protagonist Bob Jones, masturbation is the answer to them all. But where? When? How? Plus his friend Dwight, whose entire vocabulary consists of permutations of 'fuck', and a cowgirl who thinks they're both idiots.

4. When the plane he's flying on crash-lands 65,000,000 years in the past, Bob and his fellow passengers realize they're stranded. They also realize that the meteor that killed all the dinosaurs will show up eventually, so they'd better figure out how to deflect it before it arrives.

5. When Rachael loses her job as secretary to the CEO of Jerol's Jewelry, she throws herself from his office window in despair. On the other side, instead of a 36-story drop, she finds the magical world of Gelda. The natives are enslaved, forced to mine precious metals and gems by a cruel and greedy dictator: her former boss. Can she save both a mystical race and her 401k?

6. Zola Smith should have told Jack how she felt in 1987, but now he's not only married, he has three kids and a dog. Zola spends her day smoking, drinking, and reading about Britney Spears, painfully aware her own life is just as ruined.


[All Hail the Evil Editor!

Below is the synopsis of my science fiction novel A Window of Opportunity. I beg you and your minions to gnaw it to pieces so it can be rebuilt better and stronger. ]




Original Version

Yesterday was the worse day in Bob's life. ["Worst." Making a glaring mistake in your first sentence is like walking into a job interview and realizing you forgot to wear pants.] Maybe. [I'd go with "So far."] Today wasn't over yet. [We seem to be in Bob's POV, and since today isn't over yet for Bob, we should say, Today isn't over yet. The rest of the query can be in present tense as well, except when describing something that happened yesterday.] However, Bob knew today wouldn't include the sheer terror of clutching his knees while his plane to Seattle crash-landed into a lake. Not that today was without its problems. Bob's cell phone couldn't pick up a signal, even from satellites, and that had never happened before. [Interestingly, Bob's cell phone was working fine when he turned it on at 50,000 feet, moments before the jet started plummeted to the ground.]

[A chart to help determine whether yesterday or today was worse for Bob.

Yesterday . . . . .  Today (so far)
Plane crash . . . . No bars on cell phone]

Not surprising since he hadn't seen anything familiar on the ground during the approach to the lake. [Of course, it's had to notice anything outside when the flight attendant has you leaning forward with your head between your legs.] No Pacific coast, no cities, just unbroken jungle.

[Pilot: The Seattle airport seems to be missing.

Copilot: Seattle seems to be missing.

Pilot: Hey, where's the Pacific Ocean?]

Nearly two hundred people needed food, water and shelter, but nothing could come from the plane until it finished settling into the lake.

[Bob: We need to get the bottled water off the plane.

Pilot: It's too dangerous. The plane hasn't settled to the bottom of the lake.

Bob: But what will we drink? Wait . . .  Did you say "lake"?]


[Bob: Okay, the plane has finished settling into the lake. Now can we go get some food and water?

Pilot: The lake is too deep, we'd need SCUBA gear.

Bob: Where are we gonna get SCUBA gear?

Pilot: There's some on the plane.]

The flight crew gave out as little information as possible. Bob assumed they had no idea where the plane had crashed and didn't want to panic everyone. Instead, they focused on calm, orderly action to meet immediate needs. The only thing the crew couldn't hide was that the radios in the survival kits couldn't contact anyone.

Foraging parties found odd things nearly every trip: a circular footprint large enough to lie down in, [apparently made by a giant with a pegleg,] birds with teeth and fish that didn't look right. [They had tiny human heads.] [Did you ever notice that no matter what animal you imagine with a human head, it doesn't look right?] Neither the amateur astronomer nor world travelers recognized the constellations. ["I can't see the constellation that looks like a goat anywhere. And where did that one that looks like a sheep come from?"] After taking a series of photos, the amateur astronomer began running a search in a star charting program to match the photographed sky to an approximate location. [They couldn't bring any food off the plane after the crash, but one man had the foresight to bring a camera and star charting equipment.] [When photographing stars you have to hold the camera very still for about a million years.] It took less than a day to determine the sky overhead didn't match anything in the database. [A day? Does he have a computer or an abacus?] However, the Moon was the same, if slightly larger. The next step had the program calculating star positions moving backwards in time.

It took over two weeks to produce an answer: [Two weeks running a program on a laptop? My laptop battery dies in two hours.] they were 65 million years in the past. [Bob immediately decided this was the last time he booked a flight with Northwest.] Slowly, acceptance of their plight seeped through the survivors. There would be no rescue. [They would never find out who won Survivor, Micronesia.] They needed to leave the plane. Move to somewhere with better resources, somewhere safer. [If I've lasted two weeks in a world crawling with dinosaurs, without being trampled or eaten, I'm not exploring for somewhere safer.] They needed to build and grow. The meteor that killed the dinosaurs was coming. [It would be there in about three million years.]


(The title indicates a side-effect of the central premise -- the meteor is coming. If it arrives too soon, there isn't time to do anything about it. If it arrives too late, their descendants will have forgotten there's something to worry about. In between is a window of opportunity to ride out the disaster in bunkers or deflect the meteor.) [Deflect the meteor? They have as much chance of that as cavemen did of deflecting a tsunami. Plus, if they deflect the meteor, dinosaurs will be around to dine on Neanderthal man. And us.]


Notes

This is like the TV show Lost, except it takes place 65 million years earlier.

It took man till the 20th century before he could even make a movie about trying to deflect a meteor. And these people are going to pull it off in 64,998,000 B.C.?

How do these people get from the plane in the lake to the shore? I would assume they swim, using their seat cushions for flotation, but who would expect a cell phone or laptop to work after taking it for a swim?

You somehow survive a plane crash. It's a miracle. The phones don't work--not surprising as you're in the middle of nowhere-- so someone suggests you split up and walk in different directions and hope someone reaches civilization. But one man convinces everyone to wait while he determines where you are. After two weeks, with food supplies dwindling, he finally announces his findings: "We're 65 million years in the past." And everyone buys this? More likely they would kill him on the spot, and start walking.

I can't tell if this is the story of the 200 survivors, or of Bob. Bob disappears from the synopsis. If he's not the most important character, I wouldn't open with the cutesy "worst day of Bob's life." If he is the most important character, keep him in the synopsis so we don't lose interest in him.

A synopsis should take us through the whole story, not leave us wondering what happens. This is all set-up. You explain how they got there and how they figured out where they were. The story is what comes next, and we get none of it.


Selected Comments

pjd said...I was SO hoping it was #5.

Besides wincing at the tense changes throughout, I kept feeling that you were missing the opportunity to tell me a pretty cool story. Put us at the point where they discover when and where they are and that the meteor is coming. What's at stake? Do any of the passengers think they shouldn't survive the meteor? What do they do about it?

I actually think the premise sounds interesting and you could make something of this, but the synopsis needs all the changes EE describes.


writtenwyrdd said...Okay, a couple of things. First, you list some strange things for people to be doing after a plane crash-- running a 2 week computer program? Second, you don't list the 'normal' things that would happen after the plane crash-- struggle to survive, perhaps?

Besides all that, though, this letter doesn't tell the story of the book, it tells the set up. You want to sell the story, show what makes it different.

I think that writing from Bob's perspective is probably a good tactic.

Good luck in the revisions.


BuffySquirrel said...I'm not buying this plane crash-landing into a lake and everyone (and their electronics) surviving. I need to be convinced that's even possible. Couldn't the pilots find some ground on which to land the plane?

Xenith said...This gets bogged down in details. A paragraph or more to say they discover they're in some really weird place? You could do that in a sentence, or two. "Show, don't tell" isn't really as applicable here.


talpianna said...Haven't we Pliocene much of this plot before?


150 said...Yeah, what everyone else said: get to the crux quicker. "Bob and his fellow passengers thought they were lucky to survive the plane crash--until an on-board astronomer figured out that they had landed millions of years in the past. Faced with starting human civilization from scratch, in a place and time it was never meant to be, the survivors of Flight 815 must..." ...something.

Honestly, my biggest problem with the setup is that I always took the "65 million year" figure to mean "between 60 and 70 million years" which means that your window of opportunity is, well, big enough to let a meteor through. What's the urgency?


Phoenix said...What EE said.

What's the tone of the novel? The synopsis is all over the place with tone, I'm afraid. Sound like it's going to be humorous from your first paragraph, but then it switches gears. Not that a story can't start out light and go dark, but this one would have to happen in the first few pages, and that's maybe not so good.

How far does this synopsis take us into the story? I'm not getting a real sense of the danger they're facing. Okay, yes, no hope to return to the present, a jungle (no botanists aboard, apparently, to notice the differences in vegetation) to contend with, and a couple of strange animals. A huge footprint can be scary but your synopsis spends more time calculating the movements of the constellations than it does on the footprint. Does anyone run into a dino? Or a dinobus?

And, gosh, the meteor is coming? Um, how do they know it's, like, NOW? 65 million years is, of course, a rough estimate of when it hit, give or take a few hundred thousand years. Not sure there's enough of a countdown here to generate suspense. Any number of civilizations could rise and fall in the time before the meteor comes.

I think the premise could be a fun one (I'm a real dinofan), but we need, I think, more immediate danger and more immediate stakes coming through in the synopsis, as well as an inkling of what the rest of the book is about.


Anonymous said...Two obvious things need to be said at this point.

First, "Bob" would probably be a better name if you spelled it backwards.

Second, there's a fatal flaw in having these people travel back in time so far. Since they arrive prior to the first people's deaths, there can be no zombies.


Anonymous said...Yeah, this guy with his 2 weeks of computer running is just a bad idea. That would be as boring as watching me write. Does the two weeks pass in five words or do we have to read 200 pages to get there? Why don't they just look up in the sky and see the blazing comet as they hide from the tyrannosaur on page 3?


Robin S. said..."fish that didn't look right. [They had tiny human heads.]"

Oh my God, the visual on this was a scream.

I agree with pjd that there's a good story in here somewhere, once the holes are fixed.

But I do have a problem with how the plane crashed into a lake, and how that's a good thing for them, if it's submerged. Is it just stuck in muck? Muck would maybe be better than submersion. Except then, dinosaurs could see them. Hmmm.

OK- tell us how this works when you get a minute, please.

I feel for you on the difficulties in writing an effective synopsis.


Stephanie said...Thanks everyone for the commentary (checks off "be a warning to others" from the to-do list). I also think there's a good story in here somewhere. I wrestle with telling it coherently. Especially in 400 words or less. :-)

Is it acceptable to post a revision in the comment thread and request additional comments?


Evil Editor said...Yes.