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Guess the Plot

If Only You Knew

1. The autobiography of a thermometer that has seen far too many openings.

2. Ostracized for throwing up on a basketball player, Melissa vows to get revenge on all of her high school classmates by creating an app that they must all pay for.

3. I could tell you things. Things so secret you’d simply lie down on the floor and die. But I’m not the kind to talk. When people tell me a secret, you can bet the farm it’ll go to the grave with me. By the way… could you loosen these ropes a bit? They’re cutting off my circulation. Wait… what’re you doing with that branding iron? No, wait. I’ll talk. I’ll tell you anything you wanna know. All you gotta do is ask. I don’t hold back. I say tell everyone everything, and it’ll all work out in the end. We’re all friends here, right? Wait…

4. In a peer-review, only you came through
But don’t misconstrue the Phillips-head screw
And why only you can get cheese fondue
To pass on through to the Kung Fu kazoo
Only me and you… and a dog named Boo.
If only you knew how new was the gnu
Then you, too, could chew the glue with a shrew.
In Kalamazoo, I threw him a shoe,
But Boo’s in a stew, and mooed in my brew.

5. If only Dolly the sheep knew how to spell. Then she could have effectively pointed out the murderer of nearly half the herd. With only rams left, it was up to Dolly and her littermate, Polly, to solve the crime. With blood pouring out of her entrails, Dolly tried to spell ewe, but...

6. ...what EE has used his slush manuscripts for. Will they continue to get stacked around his bathroom and thrust into his fireplace, or will he find one that tickles his fancy? Not recommended for readers with moral codes, or weak stomachs. 

Original Version

Seventeen-year-old Melissa Stratten’s classmates won’t stop whispering about the time she puked on a senior basketball player.

[Pssst! Remember the time Melissa Stratten puked on the basketball player?

Yeah. What was that, cafeteria chili?

I think it was hot dogs and beans.

I bet he was sorry he wore white pants that day.

Anyway, what else you wanna whisper about?

Nothing, let's keep whispering about this pivotal, overriding event in our school's history.]

So when her best friend Jack suggests they create an app based on school rumors, an ostracized Melissa desperately wants revenge on her classmates. [This is the plot of Carrie, except instead of killing people and burning down the school she creates an app.] "Chaos" anonymously gives everyone at school access to the hottest dirt. [She was thrilled with her accomplishment until she installed the app on her iPhone and discovered 90% of it was devoted to the time she puked on the basketball player.] Every student’s personal secrets are spun into one giant microblog; [Opposite of giant microblog: tiny megablog.] Chaos is school gossip taken to the extreme. Melissa wants Chaos to be so epic students will pay for it, and she can put her coding experience on college applications. [Among my passions and extracurricular activities are basketball and competitive eating. I also wrote the code for an app that allowed me to exact revenge on all my classmates.]

Then Melissa finds out Jack wants to use Chaos to publish a sex tape of a teacher with a student. If she goes along with Jack, the student’s reputation will be ruined -- just like Melissa’s. [Actually, the student's reputation will be enhanced if the teacher was Ms. Sommers. Or that hunky chemistry teacher.]

But, the more Melissa pushes Jack to kill Chaos, the more paranoid and threatening he becomes, planting drugs in her locker and pinning the entire app, and the video, on her. Melissa has to stop Jack before she ends up expelled, or else she can kiss her college dreams goodbye. [Stopping Jack would seem secondary to getting rid of the teacher who's having sex with a student.]

IF ONLY YOU KNEW, is a 60,000 word YA contemporary novel.  It will appeal to fans of ABC Family’s Revenge for it's theme of betrayal and The Social Network for it's  intellectual property battle.  Thank you for your consideration.  The complete manuscript is available upon request. 


Notes

High school kids have a reputation for being self-centered, but your heroine's dilemma should be whether to ruin the teacher by posting the video or by bringing the evidence to the principal or the school board, and she chooses the latter to protect the reputation of her classmate (presumably one of the classmates she wanted revenge on). Possibly this is how the story goes, but by stressing Melissa's motivation to keep from being expelled and ignoring the teacher's villainy, the query doesn't make Melissa a particularly sympathetic character.

A teacher is having sex with a student but the other students won't stop whispering about the time someone threw up on a basketball player? This just sounds like two different schools, high school and sixth grade.

I'm not sure how you mean the title, but unless "only you" is supposed to mean you and no one else, If You Only Knew removes the ambiguity.

Ostracization for throwing up would last only until someone spills soda on the front of his pants. I think Melissa needs to do something more humiliating.

Does Melissa have access to all her classmates' personal secrets? Or are the rumors to be provided by the classmates themselves?