Face-Lift 1078

Guess the Plot

Door Number 4

1. Carol was the consummate professional. When Monty announced the door number, she was ready with limber arms and a winning smile - until the day he called for Door Number Four. She didn't want to get near Door Number Four. She could hear whispered voices behind the painted cardboard, and she once imagined she heard the word "kill" as she passed by late one night. And didn't that woman in the Peter Pan costume bear a striking resemblance to Monty's ex-wife?

2. Is lore a bore, perhaps a chore? Does it make you snore? Not anymore! This book will soar! For fun galore, open Door Number Four! A whore, a roar, some gore on a distant shore, and more in store!

3. The US government has found a way to power the nation's electrical grid on people's fear. The plan is to torture millions of people and use their resultant fear to run air conditioners and toasters. Only 16-year-old Dot Parker can stop them, but if she does, will her curling iron still work?

4. Janet works for an old law firm. Each night the three partners' offices are open for cleaning but the fourth door on mahogany row is always locked. One night she returns for something forgotten. The cleaning crew has left and the fourth door is open. Suddenly, a man in a cape steps out, grabs her, and sinks his teeth into her neck. No doubt Janet's last living thought was So they really are bloodsuckers.

5. When TV game show host Louden Wallett is found murdered behind Door Number Four, ace detective Zack Martinez knows two things: Somebody didn’t like their deal, and the show’s glamorous model won’t give him the time of day.

6. Gary wants more than anything to attend his daughter's upcoming wedding. Unfortunately, he's dead. But when he's picked to debut on Hell's newest game show, he's given a chance to win a trip back to Earth. If he loses, however, he'll land in Beelzebub's bedroom.

Original Version

Sixteen-year-old Dot Parker has forty-eight hours before the government kills her dad. [Everyone has 48 hours before the government kills Dot's dad. What would be interesting would be to know what Dot plans to do with her 48 hours. For instance, Dot has 48 hours to stop the government from killing her dad. Or Dot has 48 hours till she inherits her dad's munitions factory.]

Her father invented the cube, an electrical system that harvests energy from emotions. Thanks to Dot’s dad, for the last ten years the country has been powered by love. [You stole that idea from Huey Lewis. 

The power of love 
is a curious thing
Make a vacuum suck, 
and alarm clock ring

Or Celine Dion.

We're heading for something
Somewhere I've never been
We're making a daiquiri, and I'm ready to blend
With the power of love ] 

But the system is failing, and now the government wants to switch to a more efficient and controllable emotion: fear. A shift that can only be activated with a password.

And the password only exists in Dot’s head. [It's dparker96.]

Alone, broke, and on the run from the same agents who took her dad, Dot has two days to scramble from her home in Alabama to the government facility in California. [If she's on the run, what was she doing at her home in Alabama? That's the first place the agents would have looked for her.] [Does she have credit cards? A car? I don't think she's gonna make it.] The string of numbers in her brain is the only thing keeping her dad alive, and she has no intention of turning it over. [It's 0112358.] Not until she sees her dad in one piece. And definitely not until she learns how to destroy the cube system. [Wait, the password is 0112358 cubed.]

Because Dot has been behind Door Number Four. [No need for the word "Because."] She’s experienced how the government plans to illicit [elicit] fear, and she has the torture scars to prove it. [This idea of running the electrical system by eliciting fear sounds illicit.] Her dad knows the system, Dot knows the password, and only together can they stop the switch—and the torment of millions of innocent people. [Has anyone suggested running the electrical system on lust? It wouldn't be hard to find millions of volunteers to watch porn eight hours a day.] [If the government kills Dot's dad in 48 hours, doesn't that eliminate any chance of getting what they want from him?] [Torturing millions of people would require a lot more torture chambers than just the one behind door number 4.] [Telling a teenager to memorize a string of numbers that will be known to no one else is a recipe for disaster. Especially a teenage girl, as girls aren't that good at math.] [Ba dum ching!] If the agents catch her first, though, Dot’s going back behind Door Number Four, and this time there will be no escape. [Did they let her escape last time? If not, how can they be sure she won't escape this time? They haven't exactly shown that they know what they're doing.]

[Dad: Remember ten years ago when you were 6 and I invented the cube and I gave you that long string of numbers to memorize in case the day ever came when we needed to prevent the torture of millions?

Dot: No.]

DOOR NUMBER FOUR is a 60,000 word YA Speculative Thriller.


Notes

It's hard to imagine Americans putting up with torturing millions of people just so our appliances will work. Unless . . . are we just going to torture prisoners, homeless guys and Europeans?

Presumably nuclear and coal and petroleum and wind and solar power aren't cutting it for various reasons. But I still think we'd go with anger or sorrow or hatred or lust before we'd go with the one that requires torturing millions of people. We're not North Korea. Maybe you should set it in North Korea.

It's a fairly original idea, compared with the many ideas that have been done to death in YA, but maybe you should leave the parts that are hard to swallow out of the query, secure in the knowledge they are totally believable in the book.