Guess the Plot
Nextville
1. Beatniks Jack, Tom, Steve and Lou pile into a car with their girlfriend Joanie at the wheel and leave Squaresville behind. They're on a mission to find the coolest joint with the hippest groove to recite poetry in, unaware of the vampires waiting in . . . Nextville.
2. Seven prisoners escape the Tower of London with the help of a mysterious specter and steal a ship, on his advice. But will the recommended course put them in a pleasant Nextville or some place more like frozen Hell? Mary doesn't want to know. She alters the charts, hoping for a trip to Paris.
3. Charlotte feels like she's spent her whole eleven years in the back of her mom's station wagon, living on take-out and home-schooled in motel rooms. As the miles roll by she invents in her head that mythical next town where they'll finally settle down and be happy. But the Nextville of Charlotte's daydreams has a sinister side.
4. In frontier America, Emma Brown has spent her life telling fake fortunes in a traveling circus populated by demons and fiends. Now the Spook Patrol is on their trail, trying to shut them down. It's business as usual: time to pack up the troupe, get out of town, and hope things go better in . . . Nextville.
5. A ghostly driver and his haunted bus carry sixteen passengers from Fargo to Nextville, a kind of purgatory where everyone creates shocking secrets to confront in the future, but nothing Amy does goes bad. Her attempts to tryst turn into wrong-place-wrong-time comedies; she keeps rescuing people instead of murdering them; her would-be swindles turn into grief counseling sessions. How will she ever get home?
6. Everyone knows that Superman comes from Smallville and Batman from Gotham City. But when you're a fifth-tier superhero like Harry Handle, AKA The Human Helper for his ability to transform himself into a wheelbarrow, you're pretty much stuck in Iowa . . . until the aliens attack.
Original Version
Dear Mr. Bookpimp:
I am seeking representation for my young adult historical fantasy, Nextville, complete at 75,000 words.
It's 1843. America is populating its frontier, the government-backed Spook Patrol is reining in all those pesky supernatural creatures, [The creatures may call it the Spook Patrol, but the government would call it the Paranormal Entity Subjugation Task-force--and so should you.]and the most popular form of entertainment is the traveling circus.
Emma Brown, proudly human, [Can't she be proud of something a little more specific than her species?] has spent her fifteen years of life [All fifteen?] telling fake fortunes, feeding the manticore, and mending costumes for the demons and imps that make up the performers in Nick Leeds' Spectacular Circus of Fiends. She used to love it. Now new regulations have Marshal Barrett of the Spook Patrol breathing down their necks. Business is suffering. Their performers are being arrested. [I would reverse those two sentences. It's probably the lack of performers that leads to a downturn in business. I hate going to the circus and finding out all the performers are in jail.] Everything she's ever known [Everything? How about: Her way of life . . . ] is being threatened.
She's always wondered how she came into the care of the circus. As she takes increasingly daring steps to learn about her past, she finds that the satyr who raised her, Nick Leeds, [The satyr? In a book with fantastical creatures, you might make it clear whether Nick's just a lecher or an actual goat-man. (Needless to say, it would be far more interesting if he were part goat, like this guy.)] [Actually, I think a man's body with a goat's head would be more amusing.]becomes less and less honest. If she can't trust the only family she's ever known, maybe she'll do better with the one she never did.
There's trouble in the Spook Patrol too. Gabriel Ramirez has been working with Marshal Barrett since childhood, [Emma's been telling fortunes her entire fifteen years. Gabriel and Marshal have been working together since childhood. Does everyone in this world emerge from the womb with a career?] but, being a half-demon himself, the new anti-demon laws have him spooked. He's not sure if Barrett can protect him from their fanatical new supervisor--and worse, he's not sure whether Barrett would even bother. After he makes a devastating mistake on the job, he goes on the run...but he only knows one place that might help a monster like him.
I have enclosed a few sample pages and would be pleased to provide a synopsis and sample chapters at your request; the manuscript is also available electronically. I have enclosed a self-addressed stamped envelope for your reply. Thank you for your time and consideration.
Notes
There's not much connection between the plot paragraphs. If this is YA, you might want to ditch the Gabriel paragraph and stick with Emma. If she and Gabriel have an important relationship, bring him in, but make sure it's clear that Emma's the star. She disappears here.
You should also decide whether learning about her past or dealing with PEST is the plot, and focus mainly on that. One of these is probably a subplot, worthy of passing mention, but not at the expense of what the book is really about.
9 comments:
The government calls it the Bureau of Apparition Management, actually.
Do we really live in a world where, in a book full of fantastic creatures, I have to specify that a satyr is an ACTUAL satyr?
-Author
Do we really live in a world where, in a book full of fantastic creatures, I have to specify that a satyr is an ACTUAL satyr?
What? You don't believe the evidence?
If the editor or agent is a Bookpimp, does that make the author a Storyho?
Do we really live in a world where, in a book full of fantastic creatures, I have to specify that a satyr is an ACTUAL satyr?
I don't see that it has anything to do with the world we live in. It's a matter of "satyr" having attained a second meaning.
If I claimed a character named Nick Leeds, who owned a circus in my novel, was a rat, you might be surprised to later find out he was an ACTUAL rat.
The Ringling Brothers circus has some amazing animals, but the Ringling Brothers themselves are proudly human, or at least it never occurred to me that they were elephants.
Satyrs were stock characters in Greek theater, so yeah, you shouldn't assume everyone will assume what you meant. It's like having to specify that when you say someone in your circus is a clown, you mean he belongs to a fantastic race of men who don't need make-up and over-sized shoes, he always looks like Bozo and his feet really are 40 inches long.
I don't know. I knew the author meant an actual satyr right away. Actually, EE's comment threw me off, because I didn't understand what I was missing. I think it would be understood.
The author just might have to specify the appearance of the Satyr. Fauns and Satyrs have both human and goat-like descriptions in the literature.
The Barberini Satyr (A statue) has normal human legs and feet.
Mr Tumnus (the Faun that EE linked to) has furry legs with hooves and funky ankles. He also has a penchant for tea parties.
Bacchus, the Roman Satyr, was half goat and half man. He was associated with wine, women and more women and song. In Greek he was Dionysius.
Pan, the Greek Satyr, the Greek god of shepherds is overtly sexual and is definately has the lower body of a goat. He's the reason we see demons and satanic figures with horned and cloven foots.
If the query opens by saying Emma was raised by a satyr, it's likely we'll assume an actual satyr. When a query starts off It's 1843 America, and we then learn that someone named Nick Leeds is one of the main characters, we can't be expected to guess he's a satyr if it hasn't been mentioned in the first three paragraphs. If a main character is a goat-man, I want to know early on.
If deities etc from classical mythology are important to your story you might want to check your memory of who had what kind of limbs etc in this awesome resource:
http://www.theoi.com/
In particular, it would not generally seem very brilliant to give a description of Pan when you're calling the character Bacchus.
I'd like to read GTP #3
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