Guess the Plot
Within These Walls
1. A group of friends gather in a lake house for a reunion. The only access road gets washed out by a flood, leaving them stranded. Then the murders start.
2. A ‘yellow wallpaper’ inspired memoir about a woman’s first year working remotely.
3. Zillionaire Melaan built a 50 foot spite fence around poor farmer Yun-li's property: the only way in or out was now over. But Yun-li's the one laughing after a 30-foot flood wipes out every other building in the city while he stays dry. Also, hydroponics.
4. Two mice live peacefully in the walls of an exterminator's home. But what happens when one gets the other pregnant and they need to relocate?
Original Version
Dear Evil Editor,
After a year spent grieving her mother, 31 year old Emma Harris receives an invitation to a secluded lake house over Thanksgiving with her old university friends. It’s been years since they all got together, but maybe this is exactly what she needs—one weekend to laugh, reminisce, and reconnect. [Technically, she was grieving the loss of her mother.]
The first night, nostalgia flows as freely as the wine. Laughter fills the house, old wounds begin to heal, and the group starts [start?] to feel like their old selves again. It’s only on Friday that a brutal storm sweeps [through? in?], downing power lines and washing out the only accessible road to the outside world. As the claustrophobia grows, the atmosphere shifts inside the house. It starts small—a few missing phones, a few jokes taken too far. But then, the first envelope arrives. Inside is a videotape of the night before. Someone has been watching them. [Apparently the downed power lines didn't affect their ability to play a videotape, in which case I wouldn't mention them.]
The footage is damning—two of the guests sneaking out of a bedroom that doesn’t belong to them. Accusations fly like bullets. Paranoia takes hold. Old tensions resurface. Friendships that once felt unshakable begin to crack. And when one of them turns up dead, what started as a reunion turns into a fight for survival. [I assume they attempt to find where the camera is, or was, by watching the film?] [I don't think a video of two people coming out of a bedroom is enough to cause all this. Instead of listing various results, pick out the most damning and give us some details.
This weekend was never about reconnecting. The envelopes continue to arrive, and they aren’t exposing random mistakes—they’re unearthing the kind of lies that destroy lives. Long-buried grudges. Broken trust. Sins no one thought they’d have to answer for. And as the body count rises, the most terrifying realization of all sets in—whoever is sending the envelopes isn’t outside the house. They’re inside. [With the only road in washed out, that should have been obvious. I guess they all assumed the envelopes were being brought in by rowboat.] [Forget the envelopes. The realization that's terrifying should be that the killer is among them.] And they’re determined to make them pay.
By the time the weekend is over, the group is [are?] left to grapple with one crushing truth: these people aren’t who they thought they were at all.
WITHIN THESE WALLS is more than just a claustrophobic thriller. Each character brings their own complex, hungry ghosts to the lake house—feeding the paranoia that twists every glance, every whisper, every missing phone into something sinister. The novel explores how our past trauma doesn’t just haunt us—it warps our reality, twists the truth, making it impossible to know who to trust [anyone], even ourselves.
A bit about me. I've been intrigued by the darkness in the world since I can remember, filling my childhood journals with new worlds and outlandish stories. I took that enthusiasm and applied it to my studies, majoring in English Literature before spending a decade in the entertainment industry, honing my eye for storytelling and atmosphere. By day, I work in film production at Netflix, but my passion lies in crafting suspenseful, character-driven novels of my own. [With your connections, have you considered crafting suspenseful, character-driven films or screenplays of your own?]
WITHIN THESE WALLS is my debut novel, and I recently finished the first draft of my next psychological thriller, THE MIRAGE, which I've included a small blurb of below the first five pages. [Not clear whether you're talking about the first 5 pages of this book or of The Mirage. I hope you mean this book, though in your first sentence you seem to be saying you're submitting the complete novel. Maybe change "submit" to "offer"?]
Thank you for your time and consideration. May I send you the full manuscript?
Notes
The first plot paragraph suggests Emma is the main character, but she's never mentioned again. For all we know, hers was the first dead body. If she's gonna be instrumental in solving the crime, work her in.
Is every phone missing? If not, is anyone able to alert the police that there's a murderer in the house, and the body count is rising? The cops must have a boat or a helicopter available to them.
The plot summary is way longer than what most agents consider ideal. Kind of like when Netflix puts out a ten-episode adaptation of a Harlan Coben novel that could have been a two-hour movie. Here's a pared down version:
After a year spent grieving the loss of her mother, 31-year-old Emma Harris receives an invitation to a secluded lake house over Thanksgiving with her old university friends. It’s been years since they all got together, but maybe this is exactly what she needs—one weekend to laugh, reminisce, and reconnect.
The first night, nostalgia flows as freely as the wine. Laughter fills the house, and to Emma it feels like old times. Then on Friday, a brutal storm sweeps through, washing out the only road to the outside world. As claustrophobia grows, the atmosphere shifts from camaraderie to paranoia. And then, the first envelope arrives. Inside is a videotape of the night before.
The footage is damning, unearthing long-buried grudges, broken trust, the kind of lies that destroy lives. Accusations fly like bullets. Friendships that once felt unshakable begin to crack. And when one of them turns up dead, what started as a reunion becomes a fight for survival.
The material after the plot summary can be shortened too. For instance:
A bit about me. By day, I work in film production at Netflix, but my passion lies in crafting suspenseful, character-driven novels of my own. WITHIN THESE WALLS is my debut novel, and I recently finished the first draft of a second psychological thriller.
Is the videotape necessary? I would think photographs and other evidence would be better, as the person doing this had no way of knowing anything incriminating or damning would happen that would be worth taping. For that matter, they had no way of knowing the road would be washed out, preventing the post office or UPS from delivering the envelopes, but they apparently foresaw the possibility.
Whether to treat a group of people as singular or plural is open to debate. Some say it depends on whether you're in America or Britain. The rule of thumb I made up is if you were changing "the group" to a pronoun, would you change it to "it" or "they"?
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