Guess the Plot
Portal to Murder
1. Damien discovers a portal to another world where he can murder anyone, without getting caught. He figures, Cool, man, and embarks on a manic blood binge.
2. It was the perfect crime, the victim killed in a locked room. Detective Anna Hicks can come up with only one explanation: a portal to the ninth dimension.
3. Michael Spinner traveled through time to kill the man who ruined him. Just his luck, detective Jennifer Castle happens to be the nexus of time-travel itself.
4. A bottle of Windex reveals a shadowplay of long-ago betrayal in Helen's clouded bedroom mirror. Will Helen solve a murder...or become a victim?
5. Excessive debt from recreational shopping breaks Dorothy’s spirit. The Nordstrom’s annual shoe sale becomes her portal to murder as she goes on a killing spree of pushy women shoppers.
6. Desperate for original submissions, a blogging literary agent snaps, when her admonitions to “drop the portals, folks” fails to discourage a timeworn sci fi device.
Original Version
Dear Evil Editor.
Homicide detective, Jennifer Castle, is faced with the impossible: [She must play the trombone and the violin simultaneously?] several people, including an unborn baby, have been killed by a weapon that couldn't possibly exist. [A unicorn horn?] [Evil Editor likes to guess; he's seldom right.] To solve the case, she is forced to reevaluate her concept of time in order to catch a vindictive killer from the future.
Michael Spinner has been given the opportunity he craved: to travel back in time and kill the man who ruined his life. [Why does he have to travel back in time to kill him? Wouldn't it be easier to just kill him now? Or did someone else beat him to it?] But things go horribly wrong [Thanks to a minor miscalculation, when he appears in the past, he's thirty-seven miles out in the Pacific Ocean, in shark-infested waters.] when his actions unwittingly pull Jennifer Castle into the case. [Technically, can actions do anything unwittingly?] The one woman who can defeat him. The one woman who just happens to be the nexus of time-travel itself. [Is the nexus of time travel itself always a person? If so, how is it determined which person?] Can he kill her, [Busy day, when you have to kill both the man who ruined your life and the woman who's the nexus of time travel itself.] or will her death mean his own destruction? [Good point. If he kills her, some murderer she captures two years from now may stay at large and end up killing him. If Evil Editor were in this position, he would skip the killing and make a fortune wagering on sporting events that he knows the results of.]
Irrevocably connected to time travel by the circumstances of her birth, [Since she was forced to reevaluate her concept of time to solve this case, one might think she only recently became the nexus of time travel itself. If she's been the nexus since birth, wouldn't she have reevaluated long ago?] Jennifer finds herself caught in a battle that might not only ruin her present, but destroy her future. [Are ruination and destruction equally bad? If so, we could just say, might ruin both her present and her future. Actually, we can forget about the present, as it is no more than a microsecond.] [Actually, we used ruin and destruction in the previous paragraph; let's find something new.] [Her big problem in the future will be getting credit. Whenever she phones to apply for a card, it goes:
Jen: I'd like to apply for a VISA card.
VISA: Okay, great. Name?
Jen: Jennifer Castle.
VISA: Date of birth?
Jen: 4/24/67 . . . 8/28/ 73 . . . 12/21/09
VISA: I just want your birth date
Jen: I have infinite birthdays. For I am the nexus of time travel itself.
VISA: (Click.) ]
My 100,000 word novel, Portal to Murder will appeal to fans of cross-over mysteries like Michael Crichton, James Rollins or J.D. Robb. [I had no idea Crichton, Rollins and Robb were all fans of crossover mysteries; as for whether your novel will appeal to all three of them, only time will tell.]
Revised Version
Homicide detective Jennifer Castle is faced with her toughest case: solving a murder committed with a weapon that can't possibly exist. Only by reevaluating her concept of time can she hope to collar a vindictive killer from the future.
Michael Spinner has been given the opportunity he craved: to travel back in time and kill the man who ruined his life. But things go horribly wrong when his actions pull Jennifer Castle into the case. The one woman who can defeat him. The one woman who just happens to be . . . the nexus of time-travel itself!! Can he kill her? Or will her death mean his own destruction?
Irrevocably connected to time travel by the circumstances of her birth, Jennifer finds herself caught in a battle that could eradicate her future.
My 100,000-word novel, Portal to Murder should appeal to fans of cross-over mysteries. Give the word, and I'll have it to you last month. For I am . . . the nexus of time-travel itself!! Thank you.
Notes
It's a bit brief, but if you answer a few of Evil Editor's questions, it might fill out nicely.
Why you don't get published.
10 comments:
Give the word and I shall have it to you next month, as I am the nexus of time travel itself!
OMG! That was perfect! I should have thought about adding that before sending the query out.
Thanks Evil Editor, you are my hero!
I have plans to go back in time and smother Billy Joel in his cradle. Then, those year where my upstairs neighbor pounded out Billy Joel songs on the piano like a relentless Billy Joel playing automaton will finally be put to REST, and I can sleep again!
I can't wait to see what songwriter replaces Billy Joel in my new, improved Billy Joel-less past... man, this could go on forever! But that's okay, I have a time machine!
Thanks J. Evil Editor copies the queries as written, and makes the changes he has mentioned in his critique, paying little attention to punctuation. Once the critique is published it's a race between EE and his readers to see if errors can be corrected before they're spotted. EE usually wins the race, but tonight So You Think You Can Dance was on.
This might be the best blog entry I've every read... from anyone... ever.
This query did manage to avoid something annoying that was present in several other recent queries: the theme- (and cliche-)ridden opening paragraph with nary a character's name or action on which to hang our hopes for the tale.
That epistolary style might be another of those 'arcana of successful query letters(tm)' known only to deep, dark insiders, but I doubt it. Miss Snark [beautiful and terrible as....despair] says, "Give me six sentences of less than ten words each that tell me WHO is doing WHAT to WHOM and WHY I should give a rat's ass."
Please reassure me that my Best-Beloved Snark is correct, and that grandiose opening paragraphs are the waste of words they appear to me. I would be hard-pressed to pen an equally pretentious paragraph without the tongue piercing my cheek and staining the query letter with my life's blood, which would not only be messy but insanitary. I want my letters read, not disposed of in a hazmat sack.
(gectzaw... the verifications are a great source for alien life-forms; this one might be a bird with a lizard's tongue and tail)
And every new query could begin with a Guess the Plot multiple choice quiz. It's a thought.
I think this is a brilliant idea.
Please reassure me that my Best-Beloved Snark is correct, and that grandiose opening paragraphs are the waste of words they appear to me.
Evil Editor wants to know what your book is about. So does Miss Snark. Beyond that, Miss Snark might enjoy hearing about any great success you may have had as a writer while you were laboring under the handicap of not having Miss Snark as your agent. Evil Editor might want to know if you can put together a coherent, well-organized letter without straying off the subject. And while I won't care what you say beyond your book description, I may care how poorly you say it.
That's how it always goes with me when I apply for a Visa too.
sigh
snickering at kis... :D
My premiere'story' problem was with my high school principal.
"while what's really needed is for someone to jump in and say, "But the real problem is the story sucks, and here are some possible reasons why ..." "
Amen to that. I buried my first full-length manuscript for 3 years because I knew it wasn't good enough to annoy publishers with but I was at a standstill on ideas for improvement. I went off and wrote other things instead, and only unearthed the misbegotten son of Prohibition after I became sufficiently well acquainted with sufficiently informed and evil critique partners to trust that they would tell me exactly where the plot sucked or the characters were couch-jumping to an un-swallowable degree (and where my sentences ran on to the point of torturous eye-crossing).
The ms is in a lot better shape now, but I had to learn to swallow and digest a fair amount of humble pie to get it this far. It might even be worth sending out again after the next rewrite (primarily to deepen character motivations).
Thanks, EE, for affirming my faith in Her Snarkiness.
EE - you are the nexus of the evil blue ink.
I worship at your altar of laughter.
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