Face-Lift 521

Guess the Plot

A Glitch in Time

1. When Glynda mistakenly adds time to a spell calling for thyme, she has no idea what will happen. But when bubbles start forming in the space-time continuum creating holes in history, she realizes she must fix her mistake or risk having her very existence snuffed out.

2. Lemuel Morkwort, master criminal from the future, has come back in time and threatened to blow up everything with his superbomb, unless he's made supreme ruler. Can cowardly Bill and dim bulb Walter save the world, or are we all doomed? Also, telepathic crabs.

3. When Time Magazine intern Carly Vixen accidentally replaces all references to President Bush with "Mister Poopy-Head," the vice president invites Time's Editor-in-Chief on a hunting trip. Hilarity ensues as Carly crashes the hunting party to try and save her boss from getting shot in the face.

4. Rawle Penderton finally finished coding on the top-secret Welles Project, but before he can relax, he's pulled back in. A bug has resulted in a scientific expedition being lost somewhen between the Crusades and the Revolutionary War. Now Pendleton has to go against military brass, the software management team, and a sexy saboteur as he tries to find one misspelling in fourteen million lines of code.

5. When 1 million solid gold Rolexes are made with thirteen hours on the face, quality control overseer Robyn's afraid she might be out of a job--until she starts a hot new romance with ad exec Edwin. Will their "There Aren't Enough Hours In The Day" campaign convince the world to change for them?

6. Physicist Ronnie Tate discovers that a glitch in the space-time continuum will cause November 4, 2008 simply not to exist. When he tries to alert the press, he's whisked off by the Secret Service to Area 51. Can Ronnie--aided by scientist Cindy Bigguns--escape and warn the populace?


Original Version

Dear Evil Editor:

Two twelve-year old boys find that traveling through time is not a straightforward matter in A Glitch in Time, a novel for readers in the 10-13-year-old range. [That would be a better hook if it were generally assumed that traveling through time is a straightforward matter. As it is, it's like trying to hook us by saying A teenager discovers that Canada is North of the United States in my geographical coming-of age novel, Searching for Saskatchewan.]

Walter and Bill are best friends, despite having little in common. Walter is an ace student, prone to thinking deeply before doing anything. Bill is an obsessive baseball fan, and likely to act without doing any thinking at all. [This is too general to be interesting. "Doing anything," and "likely to act," tell us little. Specific examples would get the point across just as well. Consider the lyrics to The Patty Duke Show theme song:

Meet Cathy, who's lived most everywhere,
From Zanzibar to Barclay Square.
But Patty's only seen the sights
A girl can see from Brooklyn Heights — What a crazy pair!

Where Cathy adores a minuet,
The Ballet Russes, and crepe suzette,
Our Patty loves to rock and roll,
A hot dog makes her lose control — What a wild duet!

See how, through specific examples we get the point that Patty and Cathy are one pair of matching bookends, different as night and day? Do you think that show would have lasted more than four episodes if the lyrics had been

Meet Cathy who deeply thinks things through,
Whenever there's something she must do.
But Patty doesn't think a lot;
She always acts without a thought — What unstraightforward opposites!

Also note that the song contrasts dances with dances, foods with foods and homes with homes. You contrast scholarship with baseball obsession. It's like saying they're different because one likes chocolate ice cream and the other likes NASCAR.]

Their story, told in alternating first-person chapters, begins one summer morning, when they find a strange contraption that turns out to be a time machine. Soon the two of them are traveling backwards and forwards in time, and getting into all sorts of unlikely adventures. Bill finds himself tangling with British spies during the American Revolution. Walter gets captured by giant telepathic crabs in the far distant future, [This makes it sound like they're using the time machine one at a time. What's Walter doing while Bill is tangling with spies?] and is nearly thrown into a giant soup pot. [Giant telepathic crabs have notoriously bad aim.] However, there is more going on than fun and games and being eaten by crustaceans. Lemuel Morkwort, a power-mad criminal from the future, is also using the time machine. [How can Morkwort get access to the time machine when the kids are zooming all over time in it?] Morkwort also has a terrible weapon -- a bomb that can blow up everything -- which he intends to use to blackmail the world into making him the supreme ruler. [Anyone can claim to have a bomb that blows up everything. Proving that it works is the hard part.]

When Bill and Walter manage to steal the bomb from him, [You'd think a bomb capable of blowing up everything would be too heavy for two kids to carry. Apparently not.] Morkwort retaliates by kidnapping Bill’s sister, Jenny, and taking her back to the age of the dinosaurs, where he will keep her unless he gets his weapon back. [I've got a better idea, Morkwort. Use the time machine to go back to before the kids stole your bomb, and tell yourself to put it somewhere where they can't find it. Not only is it more efficient, you don't have to worry about getting eaten by an Allosaurus.] In order to rescue Jenny and defeat Morkwort, the two boys find they have to do the impossible: Walter will have to be brave, and Bill will have to be smart. [According to my dictionary, the word "impossible" doesn't come with much wiggle room. They'd better come up with a plan B.]

Time Twist is a 80,000-word novel, [Whoa! What happened to A Glitch in Time? You forgot your own title already? Do we need to come up with a new set of GTPs now?] and the first in a projected trilogy of books about Walter and Bill. Its mixture of humor and adventure will make it appealing [will appeal] to middle-grade readers who read Lemony Snicket. It is my first novel, but I have had my short play "The Little Death" published by Heuer Publishing of Cedar Rapids.

Thank you for your consideration,


Notes

Was Morkwort just abandoning Jenny in the time of the dinosaurs?

Possibly a better hook than time travel isn't straightforward would be to mention that the boys must stop a power-mad criminal from the future from blowing up the world.

I'd start this when they find the time machine, and end the plot portion with what they specifically need to do. Being brave and smart is vague. Besides, it goes without saying that heroes should be brave and smart.

I assume there's an explanation for why the time machine is sitting there waiting for Bill and Walter to find it.