Evil Editor's Blog, page 98

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Guess the Plot

Heartless

1. Tin Woodsman, a cyborg with a dark past, is sent to Oz intergalactic prison to pay for his crimes.

2. Just when the Karkonians and the Malabahians are about to go to war, Laura White, the cruel and ruthless teenaged warrior leading the Karkonians, must contend with her own sister's rebel army. Is destroying your own sister good tactics, or just . . . heartless?

3. Are all men as cruel as the one who just burned Ellie? We're about to find out, because now it's her turn to hurt someone stupid enough to believe in love.

4. When a man is found dead with his chest ripped open and his heart missing, homicide detective Chris Sanchez knows two things: the guy didn’t die from natural causes, and the guy isn’t his AWOL partner Zack Martinez.

5. Curmudgeonly New York editor R. J. Calhoun is gravely ill. Without a heart transplant, he won't live more than a few weeks. Fortunately, his gifted cardiologist is Dr. Tracey Spellman. Unfortunately, Calhoun recently rejected the good Doctor's manuscript.

6. Rupert is a golem. Except for a heart, he has everything any golem could want: a strong body of stone and steel, eternal 'life', and a brain as sharp as a tack—in fact, made of brass tacks. But while Goldberg, Rupert's sorcerer, was off getting him a heart, priests caught Goldberg and burned him to death. Now poor Rupert wanders the Earth searching for a heart.

7. Cynthia's older sister Prue steals and uploads Cynthia's personal diary to the school website. She makes out with Cynthia's boyfriend at her own sweet sixteen and donates Cyn's brand new dress to the Goodwill. Ready for bloody vengeance, Cynthia discovers a voodoo spell which means she can torture Prue in any way she wants on the condition she promises to give her heart away. Trouble is, Cyn doesn't realise that's literal.



Original Version

Dear Evil Editor,

Laura White has been destined to become Karkonia's queen since her childhood, when her older brother renounced his claim to the throne and her older sister betrayed the family by joining a group of rebels aimed at destroying their father's imperialistic reign over the country. [Usually in these stories if you're "destined" for something it's from birth and not dependent on other events. The brother and then the sister were destined to take charge, and look how that turned out. Just because you're next in line doesn't mean it's your destiny. As Prince Charles would attest.] Now, at age seventeen, [Put her age in the first sentence; it doesn't work here.] Laura has been raised to be a cruel and ruthless warrior who will lead the Karkonian Empire to a victory against their neighboring rivals, the Malibahians, [Usually in these stories, when the countries are named Karkonia and Malibahia, the main character is named Lorelle or Liliana, not Laura White.] [Also, once Laura becomes heir to the throne, it's hard to believe she'd be allowed to continue in her role of ruthless warrior. In the first place, she might get killed, and in the second place, the Malibahians won't exactly be quaking in their boots when they hear that Laura White is on the warpath. The Karkonians need to keep Laura in the castle and send Aethelgyth the Disemboweler to handle the ruthless cruelty.] and extend her country's rule from coast to coast, a job that she takes with great pride. [I wouldn't call that a "job." A task or a goal maybe, but you don't take pride in a task or goal until you've completed it.]

 Everything goes according to plan- [Not clear to me what goes according to plan. It sounds like she's well on her way to extending her country's rule from coast to coast, but the rest of the sentence suggests she's barely started.] until Alicia returns with a new and improved rebel army, prepared to usurp the rule of Peter VII. Along with the help of her new and unwanted bodyguard Shane Kage, who is secretly a rebel himself, Laura searches [seeks] to destroy her sister and protect her country at all costs.

Lies come to light, loyalties are tested, war is on the horizon, but Laura's future has never been more unclear. She is faced with the most important decision of her lifetime: whether or not she should remain loyal to her power hungry father, or sacrifice everything she loves for the country that she was born to rule. [What do you mean by "sacrifice everything she loves"? What does she love?] [It seems to me that if the rebels win, and there's still a throne, Laura's sister or brother would sit on it. So if she was born to rule, it's an easy decision. Stick with dad and destroy sis.] [Furthermore, in the previous paragraph she was planning to destroy her sister to protect her country. Now she's apparently considering siding with her sister . . . to protect her country.]

HEARTLESS, at 75,000 words  is a young adult novel about strength, love, and sacrifice set in a medieval-dystopian world.  My first novel was published by a small press company in 2011, [Specifics?] and I am currently pursuing a minor in creative writing at the University of Louisville.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,


Notes

If you want us to believe Laura has an important decision, you have to give us reason to believe that she's not cruel and ruthless, that she sees the rebels' side, that she has some redeeming qualities. Right now I'd rather read Alicia's story than Laura's.

When your sister shows up with a new and improved army, you need more than an unwanted bodyguard to destroy her. The way it's worded, it sounds like it's just the two of them against an army.

Several instances of slightly off word/phrase choice, while they don't interfere with my understanding, would have me worried.

Fake Plots Needed

...for title in the query queue (link in sidebar).

Evil Editor Classics

How Manuscripts Get Recycled, Part I

Evil Editor Classics

J.K. Rowling

Evil Editor Classics

The Law



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Summer Jobs Evil Editor Sucked At

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Statues

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Guess the Plot
Panacea
1. A chronicle of Colorado's rise to world dominance through it's "Pot to the Military" program.
2. Forest ranger Gil has, through no fault of his own, lost face in his city. In hopes of restoring his good name, he leaves on a quest to find the legendary Panacea, which can cure the miasma that has decimated half the population. 

3. When Rotton Johnny didn't get the breakfast he'd ordered, he slapped his forehead. "I ordered pancakes! You stupid djinn. I'm hungry, not a world savior." Now the world looks up to the man who can't keep a job. And worse, he has to figure out how to employ all the medical and war materiel people he put out of work. And even more tragic, he's still hungry.
4. When trolls accidentally brew the perfect shampoo from a cauldron of distilled farts they are pursued across the galaxy by beauty-crazed nymphettes packing laser pistols. Can Ug explain away his species' momentary teen-style lapse or will trollkind forevermore be enslaved by the trollop-dressed-as-mutton industry? 
5. When billionaire film director Cam Jameson is found bludgeoned to death on the set of his new sci-fi epic Panacea, homicide detective Zack Martinez knows two things. One, that alien weapon looks awfully substantial for something supposedly made out of plastic; and two--wait, did that creepy alien monster dummy just move?

6. Davey Dixon is all about the ladies. He wakes up one morning to discover his penis can talk! Turns out he banged a witch and she cursed him. The only cure is a rare panacea. He now has three days to find it, before his big porn shoot! Oh the irony! 


Original Version
Dear Evil Editor,               Gil is a twenty years old [twenty-year-old] forest ranger in the city of Borderwoods, [Why would a city have forest rangers?] his work is to scout the city outskirts and stop the encroaching jungle from invading the city. [It was a rhetorical question, but since you've answered it, those don't sound like duties of a forest ranger.] [Admittedly everything I know about the duties of a forest ranger I learned from watching Yogi Bear cartoons, so there may be duties beyond preventing bears from stealing pic-a-nic baskets.] Most of his earned money is spent on medicine and treatment of his mother, because she, like almost half of the population has a fatal and incurable disease called miasma that is slowly decimating the realm.           One day during the training melee in the barracks, [I've never heard of a training melee, but if there is such a thing it wouldn't be staged in the barracks. And it would be conducted by riot police, not forest rangers, who I assume rarely deal with melees.] a noble's son, wanting to show his swordsmanship to his friends, proposes a training duel with Gil, that accepts it. [challenges Gil to a training duel.] [Why would the son of a noble and his friends be in the forest rangers' barracks in the first place?] The noble's spoiled son is easily beaten, and feeling humiliated, attempts to defend his pride by attacking Gil with an [a] true[-]edged sword. Again Gill [Gil] severely beats him this time sending him to the doctors.             The next day Gill [Gil] is Judged by a Court Martial and accused of violence against a nobleman, but is found innocent because of the sheer number of eyewitness [eyewitnesses] during the duel. Gil thinks that he is safe but the noble whose son he beat uses his connections and power to isolate him from his friends and mom and soon after, Gil almost dies in a fatal "accident". Facing a powerful enemy, Gil makes arrangements for the future treatment of his mother and decides to abandon Borderwoods. [Our hero.]             But as he is leaving the city he encounters a [an] expedition that claims to know where [seeking] the cure to the miasma, the legendary Panacea, can be found. Hoping to find the cure for his mother's disease and prove his worth to the people of the city, Gil joins the expedition in a difficult and dangerous Journey through and beyond the jungle where he will have to learn to believe in himself and his decisions, or let others decide his future and [that] of his family. [I suspect he will make the obvious choice: to let others decide his and his family's future.]            PANACEA is an underway fantasy novel more or less 55,000 words long             Thank you for your attention.


Notes

The large number of typos, punctuation errors, and incorrectly used words (many of which I didn't bother pointing out) would mean certain rejection, as the same density of errors would be expected in the manuscript.

Also, this is all setup. Condense this into one paragraph and you'll have room to tell us what happens after Gil slinks off in search of the Panacea.

Basically, here's what you've told us: A forest ranger is challenged to a duel by some idiot, wins the duel, and then decides to leave town with his tail between his legs because all of his so-called friends desert him. And the only way to regain his standing in the city is to cure cancer. We want to know what he plans to do, what's stopping him from doing it, what will happen if he fails, and why we should root for him instead of wondering why we're reading about this wuss.