Face-Lift 761

Guess the Plot

The Eraser

1. Has Pencil Man finally met his match in The Sharpener? Or will his new girlfriend turn out to be someone who can make all his mistakes disappear?

2. A bitter story of rejection and disappointment from inside the pencil case when little Timmy starts writing in ink.

3. Jason has his heart set on an NFL career with the Pittsburgh Steelers, but when no team drafts him it looks like he'll be selling used cars. Then a professional wrestling promoter spots him and offers him a contract to wrestle as . . . The Eraser.

4. Nina struggles to teach her 4th grade students to love writing but her arch nemesis, The Eraser, destroys their papers with smudge marks and tears. The final, epic showdown comes during the state achievement tests.

5. It starts when Freddie throws his lucky eraser at Magda. She ducks, the eraser hits Mrs. Pomerantz, and Freddie gets sent to the principal's office. So begins a long streak of misfortune that will end only if Freddie, through keen detective work, is able to recover . . . The Eraser.

6. High school student Clara falls for her classmate Edgar, but romance takes a back seat when Clara dredges up repressed memories of when she was three years old: going to the park with her mommy; playing horsie with her daddy; and the day her parents were kidnapped by a brutal Chilean police torture squad charged with erasing all opponents of the Pinochet dictatorship and all evidence of its massive human rights violations.



Original Version

Dear Evil Editor,

Pretty, popular [, punctual] and privileged, fifteen-year-old Clara Vargas Leighton is the picture of young, aristocratic, propriety in Chile during the 1980s. [Remove "young, aristocratic" so the "p" alliteration is continued: the picture of propriety in President Pinochet's . . . ] [In fact, why not change the country to Peru and change Clara's name to Pepper Papanicolaou?]

But Clara was born with a questioning nature that defies the authoritarian traditions of her adoptive parents and of Chilean society during [under?] Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. Coupled with [Haunted by? Troubled by?] traumatic, reoccurring memories of her early childhood, she embarks on an investigative journey. Her classmate Edwin, the black sheep son of one of Chile’s most prominent families, serves as her guide. Clara and Edwin grow closer to each other as they explore the world outside their exclusive enclave of Santiago’s Vitacura neighborhood. Clara’s hunger for the truth about her country is satiated as she hears too many stories of police brutality and crippling poverty, only a few of the many terrible side effects produced by the dictatorship, unknown to her until now. [I don't think "satiated" is the best word, and "side-effects" doesn't seem strong enough. How about: As Clara seeks the truth about her country, she hears too many stories of police brutality and crippling poverty.]

Clara pieces together her foggy memories with her newfound macabre knowledge. [I tend to think of "macabre" as referring to supernatural horrors. In any case, it's not the knowledge that's macabre.] She concludes that her biological parents did not die in a car accident, like [as] her adoptive parents tell [told] her. Instead, they were both left-wing opponents of the dictatorship who disappeared when Clara was three years old. [That's a pretty elaborate conclusion to reach from a foggy memory.]

Inspired by her latest discovery, Clara juggles her detective work with the mind-numbing obligations of her starchy, Catholic high school. She attempts to learn the definitive fate of her parents and how exactly she got into the hands of a colonel and his socialite wife. As Clara investigates further, she grows increasingly sickened by her patrician surroundings and their indifference to and not so tacit support for the horrors committed by the dictatorship.

THE ERASER is a 74,000 word novel for a mature young adult audience.

Thank you for your time and consideration.


Revised Version

Dear Evil Editor,

Fifteen-year-old Clara Vargas Leighton is the picture of young, aristocratic propriety in Chile during the 1980s. But Clara was born with a questioning nature that defies the authoritarian traditions of her adoptive parents and of Chilean society under Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. Puzzled by traumatic memories of her early childhood, she embarks on an investigative journey.

Exploring the world outside her exclusive Santiago neighborhood, Clara hears stories of police brutality, torture and unexplained disappearances. Soon her foggy memories crystallize. She realizes that her biological parents did not die in a car accident as her adoptive parents told her; they were kidnapped.

As Clara tries to learn the definitive fate of her parents and how exactly she got into the hands of a colonel and his socialite wife, she grows increasingly sickened by her patrician surroundings and by her adoptive parents' indifference to the horrors committed by the dictatorship.

THE ERASER is a 74,000 word novel for a mature young adult audience.

Thank you for your time and consideration.


Notes

That's shorter, but it's mostly the same info in the same voice. Edwin is obviously important in the book, but not so much in the query. Same with juggling her school obligations.There's still room for a sentence or two telling us what eventually happens. Does she run away? Lead a coup? Devote her life to helping the poor?

There's no need to use complex vocabulary; simple and clear will get you where you're going without potholes.