Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Face-Lift 1121


Guess the Plot

The Blonde Top: Supermodel

1. He's blonde and a supermodel, but he's got hot-guy problems: men ride his coattails to pick up the scraps, and no decent women will trust him. So, essentially, it's Notting Hill II, The Dude's Dilemma.

2. In this tell-all memoir, 90's cover model Cherysea gives the straight dope on how she rocked heroin-chic weeks before the uppity Kate Moss arrived on the catwalk.

3. While legions adore Stacy's girl-next-door appearance, no one is aware she's a supermodel of a different sort: a cyborg sent back from the near future to target Kate Upton before she breeds. SI's swimsuit edition has never been this toasty.

4. Luciana is blonde, uniquely beautiful, and on top of the fashion-model world. She even has a Facebook persona: The Blonde Top. Enter egocentric, evil, envious Lebart, Brazilian supermodel extraordinaire and we have the makings of a rivalry that just may lead to a catfight on the catwalk.

5. Ashley is a hair model. With her spectacular golden locks and stunning smile, she's a star at all the big hair and cosmetology shows. Jeff, her favorite photographer, adores her, but knows he has no chance against the movie stars and bigwigs that usually date her. When Hurricane Abernathy traps them together in a Florida hotel, will he finally get his chance to impress her?

6. Shenandoah always knew she was different. The other toys in the box would stare and sometimes whistle. One day she gets a look at herself in the mirror. Her blonde hair has a top sewn in! Plus she's better looking than Barbie. Buzz Lightyear leaves the toy box with Shenandoah as they venture to the city so she can pursue her dream of being a model. Also, a stalker Barbie with a stuffed crocodile.


Original Version

Dear:
       
What person in this modern world does not fantasize with being famous?; What girl does not dream with be a supermodel? [Uh oh. Either we have an ESL issue or this query was written by a blonde supermodel. Either way we're in trouble.]

My book is called "the blonde top: supermodel". The original Spanish title would be "La Rubia Top". It is complete and consists of 20 chapters and about 250 pages of a book and 185 in Word. The genre of the book is the saga fiction.

Description:

Luciana Mia Seillann is a 20 year old girl with a unique beauty. Born in Argentina. The story begins [Forget the story. Make the book a photo album devoted entirely to Luciana. I'll buy it.] when in a holiday trip in Los Angeles United States, is approached by a model manager (Rick). [Poor, naive Luciana. Don't trust him, Lu! (Can I call you Lu?) He just wants to get you into the porn industry. You're better than that. You could have your own reality show.] This gives her a card, and then insists on facebook to Start your career in the world of modalaje.

Her ["]friend["] Cecilie, convinces.

That was always his dream, the blonde top (nickname using Internet five years ago), added photos to their websites and had many fans and admirers. Many people knew her.

So it was that after a year became one of the most famous and important models in the world. For her charisma and beauty quickly conquer to the principal organizers of the fashion shows, his way of pose for the cameras makes transcend their photographs and the audience stay impressed and delighted with their photo campaigns.

It has a lot of work. Always traveling and having a new adventure. The characters that crosses are recurrent, some very picturesque. His biggest rivalry is in the hands of Lebart, another model Brazilero. Egocentric, evil, envious. And it has another opponent who is a rapper trendy in America, Pitt.

Photographic campaigns, fashion shows, fashion week, promotions, events, commercial. This girl's life is completely crazy, but she lives in a very amusing.
It features ironic and sarcastic humor typical of the world in which we live.

What she does not know yet, is that letting the wrong people in his life, [One subtlety of English you need to grasp is pronoun agreement. "He," "him," and "his" are for males, while "she," "her," and "hers" are for females. Calling a woman "him" is confusing; calling a person "it" is insulting (and could brand you as a serial killer).] and doing what they say, will have many setbacks and complicated relationships.

But as all the "good" has something bad .. will be conscious of what is happening around her? ...Can she imagine the things that will happen in the next few years?...

Who knows it? .....


Note from author: I live in Argentina with my parents, I'm an only child. I have 20 years. This is the first book I write. Now I'm writing the sequel, the second part. This is called "the blonde top: Secret Love".



Notes

If you are Luciana and this is your memoir and you need someone with whom to work very closely to make it perfect, I'm your man.

If you translated your book into English, I'm sorry to report that your English isn't good enough yet. It's better than my Spanish, but I took French as my foreign language.

I recommend trying to sell the book in Spanish; if it's good enough to get published, and the publisher or your agent can sell English-language rights, it will be translated by someone proficient in both languages. Which is not to say you shouldn't continue to improve your English language skills.

Before you can sell it in Spanish you'll need a query letter that sells the story. What you have here is a list of random things that happen to Luciana; you need to focus on the crucial event that changes her life. Who or what threatens to bring her down after she reaches the top? What does she do about it? What goes wrong? Make us care about her.

The title is weird. Call your books Supermodel and Secret Love. The Blonde Top doesn't make much sense.

7 comments:

AlaskaRavenclaw said...

Mm. Yeah. Lo siento, pero esto no sirve. Hay que buscar un agente en español, como dice el EE.

Creo que una traduccion posible de "La Rubia Top" podria ser "The Top Blonde," pero eso no importa. Lo importa es cambiar su meta. Seria mejor a escribir en su propia idioma.

Quizas hay mas de uno o dos errores en mi español, o no? Sin mencionar la falta de acentos? And that's the problem. Hardly anybody can write to publishable standards in their second language. Major props for trying, though.

Y buena suerte con esto.

Unknown said...

Listen to EE. Stick to Spanish. There is a market for Spanish language contemporary YA/New Adult fiction. Make sure you have people read your novel, and help you make it the best it can be, before submitting.

Sarah Laurenson said...

Top has a much different meaning in English than what you have in mind.

Starting with questions might not be a great idea either as I can answer them very quickly ('no, not me')and then forget about the rest of your query.

An author I know recently translated his own book from English to his native Russian and he said it's a much different book in Russian. He's familiar with all of the nuances of the language and can make the same sentence more powerful. He also waited years before attempting to write a book in English.

Unknown said...

Escucha a Alaska, tambien.

St0n3henge said...

I, also, agree with Alaska.

It's obvious that English is not your first language. Even people who speak English fluently often write it oddly. That's because English is made up of figures of speech, idioms, and slang. Even people who speak English very well often choose words that a native speaker would not choose.

Are you thinking of "top" like Curly Top ("curly hair"), the movie with Shirley Temple? That's an outdated usage. I don't know anyone who uses that anymore.

I'll bet you can get this published in Spanish. Good luck.

khazar-khum said...

You know what? If you wrote this in first person, with Luciana telling her own story, the not-quite-perfect English would be a selling point. Hearing an Argentine supermodel tell her own story in her own words, regardless of how good her English skills are, makes for a charm that perfect English would lack. It makes it more immediate, and perhaps more honest and open.

Anonymous said...

Opening line:

What person in this modern world does not fantasize with being famous?; What girl does not dream with be a supermodel?

I don't. I hired and fired models back in my fashion days.

Needs a better grounding.

You need to either get a good translator or stay in Spanish. Good luck but the super model thing - we all know their stories. It has to be exceptional.

Wilkins MacQueen