Friday, April 03, 2026

Help Wanted

 A new title in the query queue needs your amusing fake plots.


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No Guess the Plot
No one submitted a fake plot. I don't even know if anyone comes here anymore.

Rowan's Spinning Compass

I'm seeking representation for ROWAN’S SPINNING COMPASS, a YA fantasy-suspense blend complete at 87,000 words. This novel combines the time-bound curses of LITTLE THIEVES, the identity-shattering discoveries of THE HAZEL WOOD and the magical corruption of  SPIN THE DAWN. My novel is a standalone with series potential.   

By day, 16-year-old BEAUREGARD is a child star, wishing the tabloids would stop publishing humiliating clickbait [lies?] that ruins her attempts at friendship, [Wait, Beauregard is a girl? I'm sure someone somewhere was so sure they were gonna have a son that they chose Beauregard as their child's name, and stuck with it after the disappointment, figuring it might start a trend, but have you considered that every time a reader comes to the name Beauregard in your novel, they'll have to remind themselves that it's a teenaged girl and not an 1863 colonel in the rebel army who talks like Foghorn Leghorn?] but in her dreams, she lives in a peaceful town with her mother, free from fame and safe from her cruel, power-hungry father. [Change her name to Ivanka.] Then everything changes for the better when her father is murdered. Beauregard convinces her mother that it’s time to vanish and find a safe place to belong. [If your cruel husband/father gets murdered, and you immediately leave town, they're not gonna waste time looking for other suspects.] 

Then, she’s kidnapped by a man with a spinning compass tattoo. [Now that sounds like a character named Beauregard. Though I suspect you're gonna tell us his name's Rowan.] [When you said "everything changes for the better," I didn't expect her to become a murder suspect and get kidnapped in the next two sentences.] [I just learned that what I refer to as a compass is sometimes referred to as a spinning compass. I was thinking you meant that the tattoo itself was actually spinning, which would be kind of cool, and not impossible if this is a magical world.] [Not to digress, but you know those Magic Eye pictures that hide a 3D picture that you can see if you look at it long enough? Why can't they make tattoos that do that?] [Maybe they can make them, but no one ever orders them because they don't want people staring at their tattoos for minutes on end and saying, "Hold still, dammit, I still don't see it. Wait! Aughhh! I almost had it. Stop twitching! 

This man is convinced [claims] he’s taking her ‘home’, [to her birth mother?] and when Beauregard’s escape plan fails, she’s thrown into a magical world that feels strangely familiar. [I wouldn't say her escape plan failed, exactly, if she's no longer being held captive by the man with the compass tattoo.] [The Man With the Compass Tattoo sounds like a good title for a book.] A world where sirens own spas [Surely your list of what's magical about this world could lead off with something more fantastical than sirens owning spas.] [Not to digress again, but how does Beauregard know who owns the spas in this world? Is being owned by a siren such a big selling point that there are signs outside the spas that say "Siren-owned"? Out of curiosity, is there a reason so many sirens are drawn to careers in spa ownership?] and extinct animals roam free, having been saved by a poltergeist sabre-tooth[ed]-tiger. Still, she refuses to look into it. [Into what? The tattoo? The world? How can she not look into the world she's now in?] She needs to return home to her mother, live the life she’s always dreamed of and even make a friend or two. 

Then, she attracts the attention of a covenless witch, who mistakenly believes Beauregard cursed her. Heart set on revenge, the witch offers to help, and Beauregard reluctantly accepts. Instead of freedom, the witch administers a magical parasite that triggers hallucinations of one’s fears. If Beauregard doesn’t find the cure within three days, her worst fear [, the fearsome monster known as . . . the paparazzi,] will come to life and kill her.

What begins as a pursuit [search?] to survive descends into a dark discovery, where she confronts the truth: her parents kidnapped her as a baby to exploit her subconscious muse magic for musical stardom, [I bought into the extinct animals and the poltergeist and the witch and the magical parasite. I even accepted sirens who own spas. But I draw the line when it comes to kidnapping a baby to exploit her subconscious muse magic for musical stardom. Who would commit a crime knowing they have to spend the next sixteen years raising a kid before they get the loot? Raising the kid will probably cost more than the kid will make, even if she wins The Voice. Plus, you might get murdered before your child cashes in.] and she should trust the man who captured her, the man who knows where she truly belongs.

(bio)


Notes

I was wrong to predict you would tell us the guy's name is Rowan. In my defense, I figured a guy whose name is in the book's title warranted at least one mention of his name in the plot summary.

What a letdown to get all intrigued by this compass that's gonna play a crucial role in the book, only to find out it's just a picture of a compass on some guy's arm or wherever.

Is there a better explanation  in the book for how she ends up in this magical world than she's "thrown into" it? And how does she find information about her past in this world?

Does she still feel the need to get home to her mother after discovering that her "mother" kidnapped her as a baby? Or would she rather find her birth mother, who probably never kidnapped a baby?

Reduce the number of sentences that start with "Then" from three to one or zero. 

Why does the magical world with its witches and dinosaurs and sirens feel familiar?

Rowan may have good intentions, but kidnapping Beauregard has doomed her to never being left alone by the tabloids and paparazzi. Once she's found, she'll be followed everywhere. She'll be accused of staging the kidnapping for publicity. The only peace she'll ever get is when she's in rehab after her drug overdose.

This feels like two different books. We start with a YA teen whose goal is to leave her life of fame and fortune for a peaceful everyday life with a friend or two. I'm expecting the father to be the villain, insisting that she ride the fame train to her ultimate destruction until she's saved by a kind man with a tattoo. Instead the father dies, and the villain turns out to be an evil witch who wants revenge for something Beauregard had nothing to do with. I'm not sure the audience for one book is the same as that for the other. 

Even if it is, Beauri needs to actively do something to reach her goal. Things can't just happen to her. How she handles the discovery about her past seems more important YA-wise than how she goes about finding a cure for a witch's potion while trying not to get eaten by a Tyrannosaurus.