Face-Lift 555

Guess the Plot

The Apprentices

1. In Rothshire Village, young girls are sent to the witches' castle when they reach puberty. Those that are found not to be witches are killed. When Gwendolyn and Heather find out they are indeed witches, they jump for joy. But their BFF Yvonne is not a witch. Can G and H pool their power to overcome the old hags who run the castle and save Yvonne?

2. A normal student comes down with a fever and faints. When she comes to, she has mysteriously become one of Merlin IV's apprentices in Avalon, which has returned to the planet. Hilarity ensues.

3. Amber, first year law clerk. Dave, lone African-American TA in the Math department. Shanni, resident at St. Cecelia's Hospital for women. Chuck, sou chef. One apartment building. The lives and loves of... the Apprentices.

4. A group of ten rowdy steamfitting apprentices are accidentally locked in a workshop on their job site overnight. During the night they discover that one is an anti-union operative and another is a cultist. Who will convert whom? Can Dave get enough sleep to work the early shift next morning?

5. Bold, cold and mean, Kurt and Morgan have guns and know how to use them--or they will when they've finished their training. Then an anthrax attack takes out all the MI5 regulars; Buckingham Palace is bombed; and 253 Members of Parliament are taken hostage. Hilarity ensues as the apprentices set out to save the day.

6. Alvin and Garth are idle trainee plumbers who are about to lose their jobs. When a time machine appears from the distant future they find out that they are needed to save the world from sewage outfall by inventing a new kind of toilet. Follow their hilarious journeys backwards and forwards through time visiting bathrooms of the ancient and modern worlds.


Original Version

Dear Evil Editor:

After man almost destroyed our own planet, what will the returned land of Avalon do with the rumors of wars? Prepare their citizens with the apprenticeship program.

Jancey, an extremely "normal" student didn't know what she would do with her life. [I'm not sure why "normal" is in quotation marks. Sometimes that's done to indicate not normal. However, I'm guessing that she is normal, which leads me to wonder if one can be extremely normal. "Extremely" suggests there are few like her. Michael Phelps swims extremely fast: there are few who are his equal. But if there are few who are as normal as Jancey, this suggests that she isn't normal. The following graph should illustrate my point.

Normalness of Stuff

Note that the biggest section is "normal." That's because for stuff to be considered normal, there has to be plenty of it. But if it were possible to create a graph showing the normalness of normalness, the biggest section would be the "extremely normal" section, because by definition, being normal to the extreme is what makes something normal. In short, to indicate that things or people are normal, just call them normal.]

Her skills were limited and she was not very talented. [No need to make both of those points.] Her best friend, Sarah, is a fashionable cook. [I'm not sure if that means she cooks fashionable food or dresses fashionably while stirring the soup.] Her enemy, Joseph, is the perfect gentleman. ["Enemy" is a strong word. In what way is he her enemy?] Suddenly, after fainting over a fever, she is caught up with magic, and become's the apprentice of Merlin the IV (the king's head wizard). [You don't need an apostrophe in "becomes," and whattaya mean she "becomes" Merlin's apprentice? She's suddenly his apprentice, with no explanation?] She is going to have to survive the magic program to achieve her dream [What is her dream? You said she didn't know what to do with her life, which suggests she doesn't know what her dream is.] and learn the destiny of her fellow kingdom. [Her fellow kingdom?]

Thank you with all the apperication [Anagram: appreciation.] of the "The Apprentices" [Anagram: apperication.] Manuscript [Whether "appreciation" or "apperication," the sentence doesn't make sense.]


Notes

Okay, fess up, you're Jack, age 14, who sent in one of the writing exercise scenes Sunday, right? Congrats on writing a book. If it gets published everyone else here will hate you, so instead of writing a query, work on improving the book.

A lot of errors, and not enough story. Is Jancey a normal student in Avalon or in the almost destroyed world? Are Joseph and Sarah in the book after Jancey becomes the apprentice? If not, they don't need to be in the query. If so, give them a bigger role in the query.

All we know about the story is that a girl becomes Merlin IV's apprentice. You need about ten sentences, each of which adds information and follows logically from the previous sentence. I assume the main plot is the Merlin section, so concentrate the query on that.

We need to know how long the book is (in words) and who would want to read it (children, adults, teens).