Guess the Plot
Poisonfall
1. Whisked by a natural phenomenon to a place where it rains poison, Azran realizes there's no place like home. But to get home, he'll need to find a machine that can create a natural phenomenon that will whisk him there. Also, a wyvern.
2. Halloween always sucked for Chuck. It's that time of the year, the kids are whining for new costumes for themselves and the goddamned dog, and his wife is bitching in the kitchen. He's getting the treats this year, and it's time for...revenge.
3. In a world without adjectives, without adverbs or articles; there can be only one result when murder comes to dinner. Administer, and stand back.
4. According to the latest statistical analysis, more people disappear in October than any other month. Looking at these disturbing trends, Detective Zack Martinez knew two things for certain. Somebody had a pumpkin fetish to die for. And he wouldn’t have any trouble finding a good Halloween costume this year.
5. Gilthoniel, Elven Queen of the Golden Forest, has kept her lands in a perpetual state of the autumnal weather she loves for millenia. But when human housing developers begin bulldozing the edges of her forest, she has no choice but to make those beautiful, fluttering leaves deadly. With the workers dying en masse on site, will the humans finally leave her beloved land alone?
Original Version
Dear Evil Editor,
Eighteen-year-old Azlan lives in Dunia—a [combination of Dune and Narnia.] [I would rather read the Narnia stories set in a world with giant sand worms than the Dune plot set in a fantasy world of talking animals, but they both have appeal.] world at peace, untainted by wars or the poisonfall. He yearns to escape his troublesome family and plans for a heedless adventure to travel the world. When he visits a restricted beach in spite of warnings from his friends, a natural phenomenon sends him on a one-way trip to another world—Tragaska. [What do you mean by "sends him"? Is it like a tornado picks him up and drops him in Oz? Or like he enters a portal that instantly takes him to Narnia? Is he warned away from this beach because the phenomenon is there (in which case I would expect the phenomenon to have a nearby sign saying CAUTION! STAY BACK UNLESS YOU WANT TO GO TO TRAGASKA!)?]
Tragaska is a world plagued by the poisonfall. The meadows are red and docile creatures have been deformed into mutants. [Sounds like a pretty cool place. How do I find the phenomenon?] Much of the population has dwindled, and the remaining survivors seek refuge in underground bunkers to escape the poisonous rain.
Having witnessed the realities the Tragaskans face day by day, Azlan sets out on a journey to find a way back to Dunia—a journey which requires him to cross the mutant-abundant lands and avoid nations fighting over resources made scarce by the poisonfall. Suddenly, the idea of an adventure no longer seems fun.
He enlists the help of Raqnas, an obnoxious wyvern capable of speaking human-tongue. Raqnas is a mercenary working for one of the warring nations, though is dissatisfied living his life around humans who only seem to think of him as a mutant, despite his intelligence. He agrees to help Azlan, enticed by the promise of peace and safety Dunia offers him.
However, Raqnas is controlling and Azlan loathes authority. They hate each other, though cannot make the journey to Dunia without the [each] other; Raqnas knows the way to the forbidden machine capable of recreating the phenomenon, which can only be operated with human fingers. [Why recreate the phenomenon if it sends the user to Tragaska? They just left Tragaska. Or does the machine-made phenomenon send the user anywhere he wants to go? You'd think a world where they've developed a machine that can send you anywhere would also have invented a Siri-like interface allowing Raqnas to just say Send me to Dunia, instead of needing fingers. Then he could eat Azlan and still go to Dunia.] [How far are they from Dunia, as the wyvern flies?] [How far are they from the forbidden machine, as the wyvern flies? Can't they just fly over the mutants and warring nations?]
And with the war within Tragaska coming to a close—where both sides would lose to the poisonfall—the two are forced to work together, to escape a world destined for destruction. Azlan hopes to reach Dunia before Raqnas eats him out of temper. [As I understand it, they need each other, so there's no danger of being eaten until after the machine transports them to Dunia.]
POISONFALL is a 92,000-word adventure fantasy novel with series potential.
Thank you for your consideration. I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Sincerely,
Notes
So the trip from Dunia to Tragaska happens via a natural phenomenon, while the return trip requires the same phenomenon, but created by a machine? Does this phenomenon have a name? The word seems vague, like calling a character "the entity."
So the plot basically is Azlan, who wants out of Dunia, gets whisked to a place that's much worse than Dunia, and decides Dunia is bearable after all? He doesn't even stick around awhile and save a few doomed Tragaskans? At least Dorothy made a few friends and helped them out before going home to Kansas.
Are Tragaska and Dunia on the same planet or in the same universe or dimension? Just because Tragaska sucks doesn't mean there aren't hundreds of places better than Dunia, so I'm not sure what's been accomplished in the end. Someone needs to do something. Or learn something of value besides that poisonfall is bad.
2. Halloween always sucked for Chuck. It's that time of the year, the kids are whining for new costumes for themselves and the goddamned dog, and his wife is bitching in the kitchen. He's getting the treats this year, and it's time for...revenge.
3. In a world without adjectives, without adverbs or articles; there can be only one result when murder comes to dinner. Administer, and stand back.
4. According to the latest statistical analysis, more people disappear in October than any other month. Looking at these disturbing trends, Detective Zack Martinez knew two things for certain. Somebody had a pumpkin fetish to die for. And he wouldn’t have any trouble finding a good Halloween costume this year.
5. Gilthoniel, Elven Queen of the Golden Forest, has kept her lands in a perpetual state of the autumnal weather she loves for millenia. But when human housing developers begin bulldozing the edges of her forest, she has no choice but to make those beautiful, fluttering leaves deadly. With the workers dying en masse on site, will the humans finally leave her beloved land alone?
Original Version
Dear Evil Editor,
Eighteen-year-old Azlan lives in Dunia—a [combination of Dune and Narnia.] [I would rather read the Narnia stories set in a world with giant sand worms than the Dune plot set in a fantasy world of talking animals, but they both have appeal.] world at peace, untainted by wars or the poisonfall. He yearns to escape his troublesome family and plans for a heedless adventure to travel the world. When he visits a restricted beach in spite of warnings from his friends, a natural phenomenon sends him on a one-way trip to another world—Tragaska. [What do you mean by "sends him"? Is it like a tornado picks him up and drops him in Oz? Or like he enters a portal that instantly takes him to Narnia? Is he warned away from this beach because the phenomenon is there (in which case I would expect the phenomenon to have a nearby sign saying CAUTION! STAY BACK UNLESS YOU WANT TO GO TO TRAGASKA!)?]
Tragaska is a world plagued by the poisonfall. The meadows are red and docile creatures have been deformed into mutants. [Sounds like a pretty cool place. How do I find the phenomenon?] Much of the population has dwindled, and the remaining survivors seek refuge in underground bunkers to escape the poisonous rain.
Having witnessed the realities the Tragaskans face day by day, Azlan sets out on a journey to find a way back to Dunia—a journey which requires him to cross the mutant-abundant lands and avoid nations fighting over resources made scarce by the poisonfall. Suddenly, the idea of an adventure no longer seems fun.
He enlists the help of Raqnas, an obnoxious wyvern capable of speaking human-tongue. Raqnas is a mercenary working for one of the warring nations, though is dissatisfied living his life around humans who only seem to think of him as a mutant, despite his intelligence. He agrees to help Azlan, enticed by the promise of peace and safety Dunia offers him.
However, Raqnas is controlling and Azlan loathes authority. They hate each other, though cannot make the journey to Dunia without the [each] other; Raqnas knows the way to the forbidden machine capable of recreating the phenomenon, which can only be operated with human fingers. [Why recreate the phenomenon if it sends the user to Tragaska? They just left Tragaska. Or does the machine-made phenomenon send the user anywhere he wants to go? You'd think a world where they've developed a machine that can send you anywhere would also have invented a Siri-like interface allowing Raqnas to just say Send me to Dunia, instead of needing fingers. Then he could eat Azlan and still go to Dunia.] [How far are they from Dunia, as the wyvern flies?] [How far are they from the forbidden machine, as the wyvern flies? Can't they just fly over the mutants and warring nations?]
And with the war within Tragaska coming to a close—where both sides would lose to the poisonfall—the two are forced to work together, to escape a world destined for destruction. Azlan hopes to reach Dunia before Raqnas eats him out of temper. [As I understand it, they need each other, so there's no danger of being eaten until after the machine transports them to Dunia.]
POISONFALL is a 92,000-word adventure fantasy novel with series potential.
Thank you for your consideration. I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Sincerely,
Notes
So the trip from Dunia to Tragaska happens via a natural phenomenon, while the return trip requires the same phenomenon, but created by a machine? Does this phenomenon have a name? The word seems vague, like calling a character "the entity."
So the plot basically is Azlan, who wants out of Dunia, gets whisked to a place that's much worse than Dunia, and decides Dunia is bearable after all? He doesn't even stick around awhile and save a few doomed Tragaskans? At least Dorothy made a few friends and helped them out before going home to Kansas.
Are Tragaska and Dunia on the same planet or in the same universe or dimension? Just because Tragaska sucks doesn't mean there aren't hundreds of places better than Dunia, so I'm not sure what's been accomplished in the end. Someone needs to do something. Or learn something of value besides that poisonfall is bad.
20 comments:
Azlan needs a name change. As EE pointed out, it's way too close to Aslan and you don't want editors thinking of a far more famous fantasy series while reading about yours.
Tragaska should be referred to as "another land" rather than "another world" if they're on the same planet. Which I figure they must be if one of Dunia's defining characteristics is "untainted by the poisonfall."
Explain a little more about the phenomenon generating machine, like what practical use it has and why it's forbidden. Right now, it feels like it exists solely to give your characters a way to get to Dunia that forces them to work together.
There's some awkward language that needs cleaning up. A world at peace is obviously untainted by wars so you're just wasting words telling us something we already know. EE has pointed out a lot of other places where you could cut words without losing any meaning.
You're telling us that Azlan's family is troublesome and Raqnas is obnoxious and controlling. Show us instead. How is Azlan's family troublesome? What specifically about them makes Azlan want to leave? What does Raqnas do that is obnoxious and controlling?
You've got the basics here. I know who the main character is and that he wants to get back home. I know that if he succeeds, he gets to return home and if he fails, he'll be killed somewhere between the war and the poison fall. what's missing is why I should care. I don't feel much sympathy for Azlan. I'm wondering why I'm reading about this bored kid who just wants to get back to Perfectland and not a Tragaskan struggling to reach a world free of the poisonfall, or anyone who's going to act out of something other than self interest.
If you end with the threat that the wyvern might eat your main character and I think that would be fine, that's a problem.
Okay, so the good news is that you've given us a protagonist, a desire, and an obstacle to overcoming that desire. Now the bad news.
Like Ink'n'Pixel, I had trouble caring. In fact, I was a bit turned off by Azlan.
Fantasy is a genre in which we expect heroes. A hero, when he finds himself transported to a land where everything sucks, doesn't try to save himself. He tries to save the whole damn place.
There are exceptions, of course. There's Jack Vance's Kugel the Clever, who was strictly looking out for #1. (Golly, how I hated Kugel the Clever.)
In paragraph 4, I had a picture of an obnoxious wyvern and a boy happily working together toward a common goal. In paragraph 5, I have to drop that image because I suddenly learn that they hate each other. Their relationship should be clear the first time you mention it. Your query's target reader will be skimming.
The number of extraneous words that EE found in the query, cutting it from 318 words to 282, makes me wonder if the same treatment should be applied to the manuscript.
If Dunia is untainted by the Poisonfall, that means it must be on the same planet. What is the Poisonfall? Is it a natural phenomenon, like the bursts of poison gasses from volcanoes? Or is it caused by something that people themselves do, perhaps a biological weapon that the Tragaskans have used on each other for eons? Or is it from pollution the Dunians use to keep their place perfect?
Minor addendum, if Raqnas is really a wyvern, then he doesn't have any fingers, human or otherwise, to operate the machine with. Wyvern usually have two legs and wings, so their only digits are toes and the ones that form their wings.
Yes, that was why Raqnas needed Azlan.
"They ... cannot make the journey to Dunia without each other; Raqnas knows the way to the forbidden machine capable of recreating the phenomenon, which can only be operated with human fingers."
Hi. Author here.
Thank you EE and everyone else for your wonderful feedback. Gosh, I hate writing queries. I suck so bad at them. (And I should’ve paid more attention to those unnecessary words.)
Dunia and Tragaska are different worlds within viewing distance of each other. Khazarkhum, your guess was pretty close. The poisonfall was a result of a bio-weapon the Dunish had released onto Tragaskan soil a century ago during a war. Azlan wants to leave because of how much the Tragaskans hate the Dunish.
I’ll focus more on Azlan’s character. What about the Masashift (the name of that phenomenon)? Should I add a little bit more detail about the forbidden machine that artificially creates it?
I’ve been having a little trouble trying to strip the complex story down to its bare essentials while adding depth to what’s important. But okay, I think I have a rough idea of what needs to be done.
EE> My point being that he doesn't have finger period, so it doesn't matter if the machine can only be operated by human fingers or if if can be operated by any kind of fingers, including dragon fingers. Raqnas doesn't even have dragon fingers.
Hi author,
A couple of things:
Quadruple check your phrasing in your query. This is the first sample of writing agents/editors will see and they will assume it's the best you've got. What you have here is a bit awkward in places.
Also, you can post new versions back here. EE will let us know and we will come comment.
Dunia and Tragaska are different worlds within viewing distance of each other.
I still don't know what this means. In SFF, 'world' usually means planet or dimension/reality/universe, and neither of those definitions makes sense in the context of two being "within viewing distance of each other." Do you mean they're two planets close enough to see each other in the sky? Or parallel universes and there's some kind of rift/portal between them? When I think 'viewing distance', I think lands where you can stand in one and look across a landscape and see the other. But those are lands/nations/countries, not 'worlds'. I would strongly advise choosing a more specific word.
Author> If I am understanding you right, Tragaska should be referred to as "another planet." "World" is just too vague.
I was thinking that Dunia was a country surrounded by other countries all suffering from the poisonfall, which is why you describe specifically as poisonfall-free. If it's a planet and the closest place with poisonfall is a different planet, I'm not sure why Azlan even knows what poisonfall is.
Azlan already has plenty of reasons to leave even if I don't know that the Tragaskans hate him because his people wrecked their world. What I want to know is why he wanted to leave Dunia in the first place and if he's going to do anything except try to get home.
Knowing that the Tragaskans hate Azlan because his people caused the poisonfall is only making me care less about whether Azlan makes it back home and more about whether Tragaska is ever going to be anything but a mutant infested hellhole. If there's more to Azlan's story than "he wants to leave home, he gets transported to a horror show planet, he wants to go home," put it in the query.
Author here,
Ah, my mistake. I meant planet. I wasn't aware that 'world' was such a vague term in SFF. I'll keep that in mind.
Ink, thanks for the clarification in regards to Azlan. I get what you mean now.
I'll be sure to return when I'm done writing up a new version.
OK, author, now I'm wondering why the Dunians would trash the other planet. Was it like the war in "This Island Earth" where there were machines dragging asteroids and comets to the surface of the other planets? Was it a convenient place to have cheap labor done, until it became a hellhole? Did the Dunians dump anything less than perfect?
Author here...
Here's my second attempt. I'll change Azlan's name when I can think of a better one.
Eighteen-year-old Azlan lives in Dunia, a world at peace. His own household, however, is far from peaceful; he has a father who is quick to blame him for all that goes wrong in the family, and a depressive mother who thinks Azlan is uncaring toward her.
Azlan sneaks out one night with thoughts of leaving his troublesome family. Unbeknownst to him, the deserted beach he stumbles upon is cursed by a once-a-decade phenomenon known as the Masashift. It snatches him away in the form of a tidal wave, taking him on a one-way trip to another planet—Tragaska.
Tragaska is a world plagued by the poisonfall. The meadows are red and docile creatures have been deformed into mutants. The population has dwindled, and survivors seek refuge in underground bunkers to escape the poisonous rain. Azlan sets out to find a way back to Dunia—a journey which requires him to cross the mutant-abundant lands and avoid nations fighting over resources made scarce by the poisonfall.
He enlists the help of Raqnas, an obnoxious wyvern capable of speaking human-tongue. Raqnas is a mercenary working for one of the warring nations, though is dissatisfied living his life around humans who think of him as a mutant, despite his intelligence. He agrees to help Azlan, enticed by the promise of peace and safety Dunia offers.
However, Azlan is frustrated by the wyvern’s controlling behavior. Raqnas is supposed to lead him to the forbidden machine capable of recreating the Masashift, but when Layla—a mute who happens to be Raqnas’ only friend—asks for help, the wyvern feels obliged to assist and tugs Azlan along.
Then, one of Raqnas’ enemies approaches Azlan with a deal to bring him to Masashift machine at the price of betraying Raqnas. Azlan takes up on the stranger’s offer, seeing this as an easy way out of Tragaska.
But the stranger double-crosses him. Layla has been abducted. Azlan is left stranded in a desert with Raqnas injured. And with the war within Tragaska coming to a close—both sides would lose to the poisonfall—Azlan has to abandon his selfish attitude to save Layla and reconcile with Raqnas, or else be forever damned in Tragaska.
This new attempt is a 360-word synopsis.
I can see a lot of words to cut. Here's an example:
Eighteen-year-old Azlan lives in Dunia, a world at peace. His own household, however, is far from peaceful; he has a father who is quick to blame him for all that goes wrong in the family, and a depressive mother who thinks Azlan is uncaring toward her.
can be cut to
Eighteen-year-old Azlan lives in Dunia, a world at peace. His own household, however, is far from peaceful; his father is quick to blame him, and his mother is depressive.
Similar cuts can be made through the whole thing.
But the main problem here is that it reads like a synopsis. Synopses are rather dull, but they do their job. Their job is to enable eveyone who has to make decisions about a book (the agent's boss, the editor's fellow editors, the marketing people) to make their decisions without having to read the whole book.
That is not a query's job. A query's job is to make the person who reads it want to read the book.
That's its whole job. Nothing more. It doesn't have to tell the story.
The query with which I got my agent was about 200 words long, including "Dear" and "sincerely". That's on the short side, but you should be shooting for 250.
Reduce your entire novel to a single sentence less than 20 words in length. Base your query on what is in that sentence. If you can't write the sentence, rewrite the novel.
Yes, it's too long. And more so after you provide the book's title, word count and genre. Here's a trimmed-down version that's about the right length for the plot portion of a query. Whether it will entice someone to request the manuscript is another question.
Wandering a deserted beach, eighteen-year-old Azlan stumbles upon a once-a-decade phenomenon known as the Masashift. It snatches him away in the form of a tidal wave, and deposits him in war-torn Tragaska, a world plagued by the poisonfall. The population here has dwindled, and survivors live underground to escape the poisonous rain. Azlan wants to return to his homeland, Dunia, but that will require another Masashift.
He enlists the help of Raqnas, an obnoxious wyvern who offers to lead him to a machine capable of recreating the Masashift. In return, Azlan agrees to take Raqnas with him to peaceful, poison-free Dunia. But then one of Raqnas’s many enemies approaches Azlan with a deal to bring him to the Masashift machine at the price of betraying Raqnas.
No sooner has Azlan accepted the offer than the stranger double-crosses him, leaving him stranded in a desert with an injured Raqnas. And with the poisonfall fast approaching, Azlan must quickly reconcile with Raqnas, or be forever damned in Tragaska.
Not sure how a tidal wave can take him to another planet; must be magic. And if the machine can take them away from the poisonfall, I'm not clear on why they would forbid its use. They should all be using it.
If the Masashift connects the two worlds, then at one time the worlds themselves must have been connected physically. Were they ripped apart?
Dunians must control the Masashift, to keep the pesky mutants and Tragskans at bay.
Sometimes viewing it backward can help you see what's essential to the plot line.
Start with what's the big decision turning point (making a few assumptions about the plot):
Azlan needs to get his act together if he wants to leave Tragaska before he gets smashed between the war and the poisonfall.
What got him there?
The stranger kidnapped Layla, injured Raqnas, and left Azlan stranded.
How'd that come to pass?
Azlan makes a deal with a stranger in hopes of a quick trip home and because he loathes his native guide who's been sidetracked into helping his only friend.
Why does he need a guide?
Azlan was transported to Tragaska from another world
From what I can see, those are the essentials you need to include. Everything else is fluff that needs to make it sound enticing.
Hope this helps.
EE's shortened version is a good starting point, though it still lacks the punch that makes a reader say "I have to read this book."Getting more of what Azlan is thinking and feeling into the query could help. I'm getting a slightly better sense of him and how he might change over the course of the book, but I'm still not convinced that I want to read about him.
If Layla the mute is going to remain in the query, you're going to need to specify what kind of help she wants. Being that vague won't entice someone to read more.
Follow ARC's single sentence advice. This will not only help you figure out how to explain your story in the simplest way possible, but also help you to pin down what your story is really about. If it's about Azlan learning to be less selfish and to care about other people - which I think is what you're driving at - you need to focus on how selfish Azlan is to begin with and how his experiences start to change him, but he then hits the low point of betraying Raqnas. Or maybe the query ends with him being offered the choice between betraying the wyvern in exchange for a quick trip home or sticking with Raqnas and hoping he finishes up his side quest before the poison rain starts falling. What's going to do the best job of making somebody want to read the rest of the story and conveying what your book is about?
Some of your sentences are still overly long and/or awkward. Think simple and try reading them out loud to get a sense for what sounds natural and what doesn't.
I think the newer version is an improvement. I would suggest starting with the event that sends him to the other planet. Knowing that his home life sucks puts a question in my head about why he's so eager to get back to it. If getting home is his goal, I would say the query shouldn't give me doubts about the worthiness of that goal.
As I read, I found that the moment my attention was most grabbed was when he was given the choice between supposedly reaching his goal and betraying his ally. At this point, I'm wondering which he's going to choose and what the consequences of the choice would be. That's the point at which I'm most enticed. So I would also suggest not giving the answers to those questions in the query. As soon as I know how that plays out, I'm no longer very enticed to read. Also, it might be good to portray the character's personality in such a way that at that point of decision, I really don't know if he's the type of person to betray his ally or not. I think you've done pretty well with that, but it could be a little more.
This seems to be a story about the main character growing as a person through his adventure. It's totally okay to have a guy who's not all that great a person but becomes better by the end. If that's a major part of your story, I think you should bring that out a little more. Show that he's a "looking out for #1" kind of guy for the most part, but also show a bit of his growth so that when he's offered the betrayal it's sort of a choice between becoming the better person we (at this point) believe he can be or falling back on his selfish ways. (At this point I don't think we need to know that he does act selfishly and then later, though different events, choose to be better.)
Don't tell us the end of the story, or even the climax. You don't want to give away so much of your story that there's no point in reading it.
Author here,
Thank you all for your helpful comments again. I’ll save up all your comments in a document and try to sort out this mess of a query. Hopefully I’ll come up with something that works.
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