Guess the Plot
The White Rabbit
1. I'm late! I'm late! I'm late! But why was the rabbit so late? Find out in this gripping tale of foxes, turtles, and doves.
2. The notorious terrorist known only as the White Rabbit is killing top executives at major corporations. It's up to one disillusioned ad agency employee to stop the killer . . . but should he wait till after the Rabbit takes out Elon Musk?
3. Having accidentally lured one unsuspecting girl down into Wonderland, the white rabbit now seeks to do so on purpose, not for human trafficking, but because.... Ok, technically it is human trafficking, but not in a bad way.
4. It was just a sweet white rabbit, couldn't hurt a fly, but Carrie's dad said she couldn't keep it. Of course Carrie keeps the rabbit anyway, hiding it in her closet when her dad's at home. When a fire breaks out, the rabbit makes scratching noises to alert the family. Will dad admit to being a jerk and let Carrie have her bunny?
5. When a hookah-smoking caterpillar gives Bob and Bev the call, they drop their rabbit-chasing quest just in time to avoid falling off a cliff. Also, a talking dormouse.
Original Version
Dear Evil Editor,
Former adjunct professor turned copywriter Ennio Mastroianni has been sentenced to advertising. Trapped in the office of a cult-like ad agency where employees resign by jumping out the window to their deaths, he spends his days contemplating a “no smoking and no suicides” sign in the bathroom, suffering through a Sisyphean revision process of the company blog, and clashing with coworkers in virtual meetings where the other party is [parties are?] only a few steps away. [You've described my day, except I don't have the bathroom sign or meetings with coworkers.] [I googled ad agency blog, and pretty much everything that came up was for "marketing" agencies. Apparently that's how they now prefer to market themselves. Also, I went to few random websites, and found Facebook, X, Instagram, and YouTube links, but nothing about blogs. By the time your book is published, company blogs may be extinct. Even if they aren't, the sign and virtual meetings are enough to get the point across, and we need to shorten a few sentences, so let's drop Sisyphus and his blog. (I got your second sentence down to a nice round fifty words.)]
When a client is exposed for waterboarding and illegally detaining US citizens, [In that order? If they're waterboarding people, it goes without saying that they're detaining them. Plus we just saved another three words.] the agency asks Ennio to clean up the client’s image while a mysterious anti-capitalist terrorist known as the White Rabbit wages war on business, gunning down corporate executives and causing stock prices to plummet. [Just because they're happening at the same time doesn't mean they belong in the same sentence. End the sentence after "image," and change "while" to "Meanwhile."] To calm the market, the agency insists that Ennio carpet bomb the airwaves with a militant ad campaign to counterattack the terrorist.
[CEO 1: This ruthless terrorist is basically a savage serial killer. We need to stop him.
CEO 2: I suggest an ad campaign designed to ruin his reputation.]
[For someone who was complaining about his boring job, Ennio seems to get a lot of big-time assignments.] ["Counterattack" seems like the wrong word to me, or maybe I just feel like the military comparisons are being overworked. How about "neutralize" or "retaliate against"? Actually, no word will convince the reader that an ad campaign is an effective response to a murder spree. Which may be the point in the book, but not be clear in the query.] Caught between his paycheck and his moral integrity, Ennio questions his role in rebranding war crimes, [Perhaps I was wrong to promote waterboarding as the most eco-friendly form of torture.] growing disillusioned and desperate for termination.
However, after a jealous coworker’s sabotage backfires, Ennio is ironically promoted to the agency V-suite, sinking him deeper into a bizarre and corrupt company culture. Now in the White Rabbit’s crosshairs, he must escape before advertising takes his soul—and the White Rabbit takes his life.
Complete at 72,000 words, The White Rabbit is a work of literary fiction that appropriates conventions of thrillers and action, satirizing the absurdities of modern jobs while exploring the moral compromises we make for our careers. The novel examines the power (and limitations) of language and storytelling. It would appeal to readers who appreciate Kafkaesque anti-work stories like Ling Ma’s Severance and Hilary Leichter’s Temporary. [I wonder what Kafka and Sisyphus would think about their names being turned into adjectives. Once your book becomes a classic, people who quit their jobs to take on terrorists will be described as Mastroiannical.]
I hold an MFA in creative writing from Wilkes University and teach American literature at Thomas Jefferson University. My short fiction has appeared in Pithead Chapel, The Big Click, and Mulberry Fork Review.
Please find the first ten pages of the manuscript below.
Thank you for your time and consideration,
Notes
I suppose if you're trying to sell literary fiction it's not a bad idea to demonstrate that you can coherently handle 45- and 60+-word sentences, but a few 10-worders thrown in for variety and to give the reader a break are also a good idea.
This seemed okay as it was, but you aren't paying Evil Editor for praise, you're paying him for nitpicking. Which leads me to wonder whether an adjunct professor-turned-copywriter isn't, by definition, a "former" adjunct professor. For purposes of the query you could just call him copywriter Ennio Mastroianni. Another 4 words saved.
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