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Guess the Plot

The Jerks

1. Some people are just so annoying--needy and clingy and snippy all the time. Everyone thinks so. But that's hardly a motive to murder them. Besides, I certainly wasn't the last person to have seen them, and if I was, I'm pretty sure they were already dead. 

2. What if dogs and birds and other animals could talk? That would be cute, right? Wrong, as Henry finds out when animals trash talk at him and tell him to f*@k off as he's walking through the park. Turns out animals are jerks. Also, a murder investigation conducted by fish.

3. A history of how we came to be who we are, including Neanderthals who let their saber-tooth tigers poop in front of neighboring caves, Romans who parked their chariots across two spaces at the market, and Elizabethans who talked too loudly in the audience during Shakespeare plays.

4. Willie "Spiceman" Wilde has the best jerk chicken this side of a Kingston barbecue pit--a lock to take home the Kentucky State Fair prize. But newcomer Nancy "Honey" Louis is rumored to have a certain knack with the chilis and coals. Will this year's competition result in a hot and steamy romance . . . or murder? Includes recipes.

5. When J.V.B.Z.G. "Electro-pecs" Hoolihan's Total Body Excitation device explodes, he fears his circus career as an accidental acrobat is over. Only Sally McGoodyGoody's Home Soup Kitchen can save him. But will Sally’s past as a frenzied hooker serve Hoolihan well as she spoons him the succor he desires? Or will she have his eyeballs out by chapter 3 because she can barely control her fingers?

6. Newly elected to Congress, Ellen James finds herself surrounded by sexual predators, sexist assholes, racists, morons, and corrupt thieves. Can she do anything to save America from all of . . . The Jerks?

Original Version

Dear Evil Editor,

THE JERKS (70,000 words) is a magical realist romantic comedy, in which a wise dog helps a lonely human find his voice.

It starts with a bird, a pretty little warbler in Central Park who tells Henry Parsons to f*** off.  Soon he hears dogs mocking their owners, and pigeons trashtalking, and police horses profiling.  Henry is a gentle soul who finds it all hard to bear.  [Especially when he gets insulted by a talking bear! Ba dum ching!] But he doesn’t tell anyone because it’s crazy, right?  Until he overhears three rats discussing a corpse in the New York subway. [I can't tell if the corpse is in the subway, or the rats are discussing it in the subway. Or both.] [Either way, that would also be crazy. Possibly you could say: But he doesn’t tell anyone because no one would believe him. Besides, it's kind of funny . . .  until he overhears three rats discussing a corpse in the New York subway.] 

Henry’s new friend Molly Bent — impulsive, optimistic, cavorting through life — decides to investigate.  [So he tells Molly he heard three rats discussing a corpse, and instead of slowly backing out of the room, she decides to investigate?] He’s desperate for another date with her.  So the usually cautious Henry plays along, following her into an abandoned tunnel under the West Fourth Street station. [She was going to go by herself? She sounds a little . . . bent!] There they find a body, sure enough... and the presumed murderers find them. [If they're the murderers, don't call them "presumed." If they aren't the murderers, why are they hunting Henry in the next paragraph?] [Why are the murderers still hanging around the scene of their crime? Is it certain the corpse is a murder victim?] 

Now Henry is being hunted, and for the first time in his careful life there’s no way to duck confrontation. [With ducks! Spoiler alert: The murderers are talking ducks!] He must find the courage to face his stalkers. [Why? Facing murderers who know that he knows that they're murderers sounds like a bad idea.] Of course, that same assertiveness might transform his chances with Molly too. Wisdom arrives, unexpectedly, from two erudite betta fish and a neighbor’s yapping Pomeranian. [If this is the wise dog that helps him find his voice, it should be a philosophizing Pomeranian, not a yapping one.] [Also, if the dog just yaps, I have no choice but to assume it's the two erudite fish who solve the case.]

This offbeat novel may appeal to fans of Carl Hiaasen’s Squeeze Me, Eileen Garvin’s The Music of Bees, or Abbi Waxman’s The Bookish Life of Nina Hill. [Do those books feature talking animals too? Or just jerks?] [Another way to go would be to say it would appeal to fans of Heckle and Jeckle, the wisecracking magpies, who were definitely jerks, at least in the opinion of their rival, Dimwit the dog.]

My writing has appeared {etc, etc.}.  Many thanks for your time and consideration.

With respect,

Notes

I really enjoyed Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. I easily bought into kids with special powers. So I purchased the sequel, Hollow City, which had a lot of the same kids, but also, it turned out, a talking dog. This ruined it for me, because hello: dogs can't talk. And even though there've been numerous other books in the series, I didn't buy them, because they might have a talking dog. (A talking parrot would be okay, as evidenced by this scene from my graphic novel about a bird named Hercule Parrot:)

Not sure if any of that was relevant.

Are the talking animals the jerks of the title? They don't seem to play much of a role in your plot description. Plus the Pomeranian and the fish don't seem to be jerks. In fact, they seem to be the heroes. Which is fine if you plan to write sequels starring your crime-fighting fish, but your main characters are Henry and Molly. Is Molly also being hunted by the murderers? She seems to disappear after they find the corpse, except as Henry's motivation to demonstrate his courage. 

Wait, there's a fish called a molly. Is Molly a fish? Henry does seem just crazy enough to fall for a fish. Is this one of those "fish out of water" stories? Or does he carry her around in a fishbowl?

The animals don't seem to play enough of a role to title the book after them. Note that the animals in this video titled Animals Can Be Jerks are the stars, not supporting actors: animaljerks

Your one-sentence description was: "a wise dog helps a lonely man find his voice." It should be: two wise fish help a loony guy solve a murder to impress his crush.

You have three stories, the romcom starring Henry and Molly, the crime novel, and the magical realism story starring fish and a wise dog and jerk animals. Combining them in a book can work, but combining them in a query leaves each of them getting short shrift. I'm not sure which of them you should focus on. Perhaps start out:

In a world where animals can talk and are wiser than humans, Henry Parsons wants nothing more than to find true love with his crush, Molly Bent. But when, on their second date, the couple discover a corpse in an abandoned tunnel under the Fourth Street subway station, Henry puts his romantic aspirations on hold, knowing if he can bring the murderers to justice, Molly may be impressed enough to go out with him a third time.

Of course I realize that may not be exactly how your book goes . . . but it should be.