Guess the Plot
The Monster Within
1. A delightful editor is driven mad by a succession of inept query letters, and punishes the authors in a coast-to-coast murder spree.
2. A haunted, guilt-ridden mercenary must come to terms with her femininity, forestall cataclysmic battle, and gain mastery over the powerful monster that exists within her.
3. Charlie was always the good guy. On his thirtieth birthday his mother complains about the cake. Again. Charlie finally snaps. "Bloodbath" would be putting it mildly.
4. Bored with the small-town life, Frankenstein pursues a new career as a motivational speaker.
5. Richard Winkler scoffed at reports of missing children and savaged pets--until the morning he found blood on his pajamas and wolf tracks in his bed.
6. Gary's intestinal problems are destroying his marriage, but the only cure would require an 18-hour flight on a fully booked plane, so forget it.
Original Version
Dear Literary Agent
The Monster Within is a fantasy novel about Hunter, a haunted, guilt-ridden mercenary. [And here I thought it was Mike Tyson's mother's pregnancy diary.] Hunter has secrets; when we learn well into the story that Hunter is a woman it redefines all that came before. [Especially the part where Hunter marries Lady Gwendolyn.] She carries within her the monster, a thing of immense power over which she exerts little control; [Are you sure her name isn't Rosemary?] more than once Hunter has watched her own hands take an innocent life to further the monster's grim objectives. [And more than once a jury has inexplicably bought her story that the monster within did it.]
Hunter becomes a pivotal figure in the battle between noble kings defending the traditional way of life and a dark wizard who wants to take over the world, but she doesn't find either side terribly appealing; [Actually, the kings don't sound too bad.] the whole thing is a battle between two different forms of tyranny. No one is more surprised than Hunter to discover she is a revolutionary and an idealist. [And a female.] She must come to terms with her femininity, forestall cataclysmic battle, and somehow gain mastery over the monster before it becomes a greater threat to the world than all the kings and wizards. [I don't see how something inside a woman can be a greater threat than one dark wizard, much less all the kings and wizards.] The last one is easy; to defeat the monster she simply has to die.
Although I continue to look for ways to make Monster better, [For starters, maybe you can come up with a better term than "monster."] my main project is now a very dark magic-based industrial revolution fantasy that is about 110% complete — I have quite a bit of editing to do. It should be down to 100% by the end of the year. [Give me two or three years and I'll have it down to a glimmer in the back of my mind.]
I have been writing full-time for four years and I have had a couple dozen short stories published. While I am steadily pushing those into more competitive markets, my goal is, of course, a long and productive career as a novelist. [Anyone who has such a goal should keep a Plan B on the back burner, just in case.]
Thank you for taking the time to consider my work. A brief synopsis and sample chapter are enclosed, along with an SASE for your response.
Regards,
Notes
It's not clear what this monster is or how it can be so powerful. Evil Editor suggests you concentrate on your main project. This one just doesn't sound nearly as interesting. Come back to it another time.
Why you don't get published.
15 comments:
I know this character! This is fan-fiction for Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, right?
Never say in a query that the work isn't ready. It's an automatic reject-or so every agent and editor I've ever heard of says.
I deciphered that sentence to mean it was the next project that wasn't ready, not the one being submitted.
What puzzles me is that so many of these queries do refer to how many novels the writer has completed (unpublished), or how quickly they can produce one. Or, as in this case (I think) they make a descriptive reference to their next project.
I think this is space wasted. We need to sell one book. This book. Until they are loving this book, they don't care what sort of career we might offer. We might wish someone would sign us because we are productive, reliable and easy to work with, but they won't. They will hope for those things, but they won't even read our work if it isn't already signable without the rest.
PS EE, I am productive, reliable and easy to work with. Please forward contract.
This may just be me, but...you pretend that your mc is a man then reveal over half way through that it's a woman? That wouldn't work for me. If she was hiding her sex from the other characters for a good reason, I could live with that. But from the reader?
That's too big a deception for me. It wouldn't mean a redefinition of what's come before, it would mean a redefinition in the garbage bin.
I actually think this sounds really cool -- I'd read it.
Evil Editor,
I read your blog to learn. I know there's an important lesson here, but I can't figure out why this story is any worse than some of the others described in queries that you fixed.
How does a wannabe author figure out what should be buried and what should be brought to full health and sent out into the world?
an ignorant minion
Never hide such a crucial detail as the MC's gender from your audience. Such 'clever' tricks will make people drop the book in disgust (possibly throw it out the window) and tell all their friends what a terrible book it is.
If the story is good enough you shouldn't rely on such tricks anyway.
Evil Editor is pleased to know that you learn while you're here; he hopes you mainly come here to laugh.
That EE didn't offer a revised version doesn't necessarily mean the book is unworthy. In this case, I am bothered by the claim that the author continues to try to improve it, but is mainly working on his other project. It's a possible sign he/she senses there's a problem, but has no idea what it is. There's no point in shaping up a query until the book is ready for submission. Hey, if the author has set the book aside and moved on to another project, who are we to say his/her instincts aren't the right ones? Also, the author is a bit too proud of putting one over on the reader with Hunter's gender. This might work with a non-main character, as we see Hunter being as shocked as we are by the revelation. But if the reader is putting himself in Hunter's place, he should know what Hunter knows. If Hunter were a dog or a Martian, would you be annoyed to discover this at the end? (Of course unexpected revelations can work, as in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, or A Maze of Death, but it's not that easy to pull off in a novel. Additionally, it wouldn't hurt to have a physical description of the monster. Is it a creature? Some incorporeal entity? This may be explained in the synopsis, but we don't have that. And it's something I would want to include in a revised version. Finally, the plot summary is mainly a list of facts about Hunter. The sentences could be rearranged without losing meaning. And without more info, that's about all EE could do in revising it.
Yes, but when the query says the author is continually trying to make the book better, that tells me s/he doesn't think it's already the best it can be-in other words, it's not finished.
And maybe it's just me, but when I got to the end of THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD, I threw the book across the room screaming "That's cheating!!!" Keeping the main character's sex (or should I use "gender" these days?) a secret until well into the novel is probably going to make fifty percent of your readers fling the book out the window. It's too coy.
I loved ROGER ACKROYD, but...well, I always read the ending of a book first (it's true) to avoid the very trickery most people hate. Plus, then I can determine if I want to spend the time reading the book in the first place....
Is this a Neverwhere prequel? Cause those only get published after copyrights wear out. Maybe in another 60 years?
Not to mention that I have no idea why coming to terms with feminity should have anything to do with the character having power. Hello Buffy? Wonderwoman?
That's like saying Master Chef Joe needs to come to terms with his masculinity because he cooks.
I've read three books that included the main character's gender actually being something other than was origonally hinted at. Two were a "male" that turned out to be female (because he/she had multiple personality disorder, and the other he/she was hiding from magical authorities) and one was a "female" that... well... actually turned out to be a hermaphrodite. I really enjoyed all three books.
Ah, that's how to get the Evil Editor to critique your work - go on vacation to an Internet-benigetd region until the comment thread is dead and no one will read your reply. So it goes.
Thanks for all the useful feedback, both from EE and the minions. My query has changed quite a bit in the meantime, but there is still some useful feedback here, especially about making the nature of the monster clearer. Much obliged to all of you.
I haven't read Neverwhere, but I'm sure this is much different. I'll check it out, though, to make sure query readers don't have that same reaction.
The bit about always trying to make the story better is gone from my query now and good riddance, but come on, don't tell me that as you learn more you don't go back and apply it to your unpublished works. Do you actually put your "completed" work on a shelf and never reread it again? Or if you do reread, you don't find one single word to tweak? My (admittedly misguided) intent was to show that I'm not some guy who just slaps out a story and blithely moves on.
Taking all this advice, I have created a new cover letter:
Dear Editor/Agent
I am a writer. I'm not some guy who scribbles in his spare time, I write all the time. Sometimes I forget to eat. Man, did that ever piss off my ex-wife when I would get dizzy when I stood up from my computer and she'd ask "when did you eat last?" (only she didn't speak so formally) and I'd think for a moment and try to remember if I ate yesterday and generally I'm pretty sure I did or I'd really be a mess now so I'd say "yesterday...?" and she'd roll her eyes and say something like "How can you even do that?" and I'd say, "well, I was in a groove" but she never appreciated that kind of stuff.
We're still friends, by the way. She's remarried, couple of kids, everything's cool.
So, eating turns out to be pretty important, not just for marital tranquility, but for health as well (remember the dizzy part?), and that is why I am writing to you, dear Editor/Agent. I can happily spend every waking moment torturing myself for just the right word, but sooner or later I have to go to the grocery store, and they always want money. While I would write for free (in fact I have been for some time), I cannot eat for free.
I know, I know, it makes no sense to me, either. Accepting that, the obvious solution is to sell my writing, which is something you could do far better than I.
As a concrete example of the stuff I'd like you to help me sell, enclosed are the first few pages of The Monster Within. It's about a mercenary named Hunter, and let me tell you, Hunter is messed up. You read the first part, and you say, "Dang, that guy's messed up." Then you read the next part, and you say, "Dang, that guy's really messed up." Then you read the part after that and you say, "Holy Crap!" but right after that is "Ooooooh." That's when you flip back to the other parts and say "But I thought... dang! Now I get it! Hunter is monumentally messed up, and wicked dangerous." You gotta love heros like that. There's sex, too, and it's not even gratuitous.
Monster weighs in at an all-muscle 140,000 words; it's a powerful beast that will grab you by the throat and drag you from cover to cover.
Unless you don't like that kind of thing, of course. If you're shy, the beast will simply hold your hand. Enclosed is an envelope plastered with stamps worth damn near a buck of my food money, just so you can get back to me.
I have another work in progress, The Quest for the Important Thing to Defeat the Evil Guy, which is exactly like almost every other fantasy novel except it has evil talking squirrels and a hot stepmother.
Yours,
Hungry Writer
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