Face-Lift 1546

Guess the Plot

The Honory

A university dean gives an Honorary degree to someone later convicted of being a serial killer. Should he rescind it even though the guy is now the university's most famous alumnus?

Mara didn't want to participate in the Honary, a trial in which the winner gets the title of Distinction, and the losers die, but now that she's entered, she's gonna beat her sister, even if she has to cheat.

Since honoraries tend to be rare, this is about an honory which isn't rare, and so no one wants it which makes it suicidally depressed. Also, Jeeves cleans house.

The mystical Honary, an ancient knife sharpener, has been discovered by a novice archaeologist. But will he use it for the good of mankind, or to aid criminals? 

Original Version

Dear ___,

I am seeking representation for THE HONORY, an 80,000-word New Adult dark fantasy novel with YA crossover appeal, the planned first of a trilogy. [According to Google, you either misspelled "honorary," or you meant ornery.]

Mara Tedros was never meant to survive until Convocation. Nearly magic-less and overshadowed by her prodigy twin sister, Asha, she has spent four years in The Institution trying desperately to scrape by unnoticed. Especially when it came time for The Honory. A lethal rite held one week before Convocation, for those few daring graduates to compete for the title of Distinction, and the Emperor’s coveted blessing. While Mara may want nothing to do with these death-defying trials, Asha is a favorite to succeed. [If the lethal rite is only for those daring enough to compete, and Mara has no interest in competing, why was she not meant to survive?] [Also "not meant to survive" suggests someone meant for her to die. Which may be the case, but if not, I'd say she was never expected to survive. Or even "she never expected to survive."] {I assume "survive" means "stay alive." If it just means she wasn't expected to stick out the whole four years, make that clear.]

But when a catastrophic misstep leaves her one friend injured the night before the competition, Mara does the unthinkable: she bargains with a revenant. A cursed spirit outlawed by the faith – feared for his mischief and ruin – he offers her the strength to keep her friend safe as she enters the rite alongside him. [As we don't know her one friend's gender, we have to figure out whether you mean as her (girl) friend enters alongside the revenant, or as Mara enters alongside her (boy) friend.] Binding herself to a power that even Asha cannot reach, one that corrodes her mind. Power capable of defying the gods themselves.

[Wouldn't it be easier for the revenant to bind itself to the friend, so Mara doesn't have to participate in the Honory?] 

Thrown into The Honory with slipping thoughts, a friend to protect, and a revenant tethered to her soul, it becomes clear that these trials are not all Mara must survive, but the monster she’d brought with her. As the forsaken whispers her name, urging her towards ruin, Mara fears what might consume her first: The Honory or her faith. [The revenant is referred to as the monster and the cursed spirit; is he also the forsaken, or is that someone else?]

Currently, I am a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, with a cluster in creative writing, and a longstanding passion for books. I have a previous novel online, which has amassed over 35,000 readers and earned modest awards, but The Honory is my first traditional publication. As a woman of color, my stories are grounded in the cultural roots of my female protagonists, as I feel it is important to discuss underrepresented backgrounds and histories. The Honory, in particular, leans heavily into an ancient Persian-inspired setting, a psychologically fractured narrative voice, Zoroastrianism beliefs, and a Sanskrit-based magic system. All of which delivers dark academia intrigue, and a lyrical exploration of power over devotion. It will appeal to fans of the gritty, historical cheek presented in The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang, and A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik. [PERSONALIZED REASON FOR SPECIFIC AGENT].  [That's a really long paragraph. Being an author of color is a selling point with many agents. I'm not sure "Zoroastrianism beliefs, and a Sanskrit-based magic system" are worth mentioning. In fact, this is probably enough information for your bio paragraph:

As a woman of color, my stories are grounded in the cultural roots of my female protagonists. The Honory, in particular, leans heavily into its characters' underrepresented backgrounds and histories, while delivering dark academia intrigue and a lyrical exploration of power over devotion. It will appeal to fans of the gritty, historical cheek presented in The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang, and A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik.]

With my pride and pleasure, I hope you enjoy The Honory.

Notes

Why can't the friend withdraw from the competition after they're injured? A guy in a wheelchair or on crutches has no chance in a lethal death-defying contest. 

After much of the first plot paragraph was devoted to the Mara/Asha relationship, one might expect Asha to get injured and Mara to help her win anyway. But Asha disappears from the query. If Mara has to decide whether to help her friend win, or to let up and let Asha win, that's worth mentioning.

I didn't get a feel for this "bargain" with the revenant. Mara gets god-like power allowing her to keep her friend safe, and the revenant gets . . . to tether itself to her soul? To corrode her mind? With power enough to defy even the gods, she ought to be able to untether herself from a mere revenant.

How is this revenant even there?  Revenants have been outlawed by the faith. Is it invisible? Disguised?

Can you describe the Honory with more specifics than death-defying and lethal? Is it an athletic competition? Is it some kind of test like they once gave women to prove whether they were witches? Is magic useful in winning the Honary? Or banned?

I don't think I'd include revenants' "mischief" among the reasons they're feared and outlawed. Taking peoples' souls is more serious than just a prank.

There's nothing wrong with using sentence fragments for emphasis, but four out of ten plot sentences may be overdoing it. Maybe tack a couple of them onto the previous sentence with a comma or semicolon. 

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

Face-Lift 1545

Guess the Plot

The Last Bounty

1.Naming a ship "Bounty" is asking for mutiny, destruction . . . and FAME, which is what John Doe (real name) wants. So he buys a sailboat, employs an immigrant, and somehow gets involved with smuggling not-illegal breadfruit.

2. A worldwide shortage of trees culminates in the last roll of Bounty Paper towels being aucrtioned off at Sotheby's for 37 million dollars.

3. Bounty hunter Chuck Laramie is enjoying his well-earned retirement when the U.S. Marshall Service offers him a job he can't refuse: hunt down the terrorist who blew up the James Garfield Memorial in Washingtn D.C.

4, Anya is hired to track some travelers to a mysterious city, but when she gets there she's captured and forced to participate in death matches where each loser becomes undead . . . and so does each winner.

Original Version

I am seeking representation for The Last Bounty, a 120,000-word, romantic-comedy, [That's as far as many agents will read. There's a reason Schindler's List is twice as long as When Harry Met Sally. Why Oppenheimer is an hour longer than Barbie. It's because people who can stomach countless hours of Nazi atrocities and nuclear war, have a limited ability to sit through a romantic comedy longer than 1:45.] fantasy novel about a bounty hunter who takes a job spying on a party of travelers and ends up competing in a deathmatch designed to weed out entrants into an elite, undead military. [Whoa. At the risk of overdoing irrelevant movie analogies, this sounds more like Dawn of the Dead meets The Hunger Games than a romantic comedy.] [Also, "death match" seems to be one word only in video gaming.]

Anya is a woman of ill-repute, taking on mercenary work to drink, fuck and gamble off every payment she receives. [While I appreciate your desire to work an F-bomb into the first sentence of your plot summary, drinking and gambling away her income is bad, but fucking is supposedly what brings the money in. Spending her income on that would be like Evil Editor paying someone to edit his blog. A terrible business model.] A powerful necromancer, she enjoys collecting bones and sinew from each kill to graft together undead creations; ‘art projects’ as she euphemistically calls them. [So woman of ill repute is her day night job, and killing people is her side gig.] [Or have I got that backwards?]

Loyal, but frustrated with her distant master, the death god Thross, she channels the powers he granted her to raze bandits, hunt monsters, and drink far more than most mortals could ever survive. Now, after six years on the road, a creeping addiction has overtaken her, growing with each new job. Anya hungers for excitement, for gold, and occasionally, for exotic body parts, which has rendered her increasingly greedy for new work. [She's starting to sound more like a hitwoman than a mercenary.] [Blogger doesn't think hitwoman is one word, but Google begs to differ, which is odd, as Google owns Blogger.]

 So, when a local official offers her a job of tailing a group of rich strangers traveling to the mysterious kingdom of Lossae, she takes it without hesitation. The chill warnings from Thross go unheeded as she stumbles through forests and mountains to tail a party of wealthy warriors who are closely guarded by undead members of Lossae’s elite military force, the Reformed.

Meanwhile, King Casimir Alwin has everything a powerful, lich king could want. ["Lich" seems to be another gaming term. No need for that comma before "lich."] His kingdom, Lossae, has stood strong after five hundred years of bureaucratic tyranny.  He has six, [No comma.] loving consorts, a populace that worships him as a god, and now he gets to host a grand party with some of the most demented nobility in the known world. They are gathered for the Trials, a fight to the death where each competitor is reformed as an undead soldier and placed in his ranks based on how they performed. An honor that anyone in the kingdom of Lossae would die for. And the final destination for the travelers that Anya is tailing.

When Anya is caught at the border, she manages to kill two of his Reformed guards in her failed attempt to escape. However, Alwin, in a twist of strange mercy, elects to spare her. Her bloodthirsty will to survive and low cunning would serve her [him?] well, as his necromancer. That is, provided she can survive in the Trials. [I was under the impression each competitor in the Trials became undead. Maybe describe the Trials as fights to the death in which each loser is reformed as an undead soldier. If that's the case. Or is becoming undead surviving?] 

My Last Bounty [I see you've changed the title.] pulls on the combined sexual positivity and emotional depth of Ruby Dixon’s Bull Moon Rising  with the dark humor in the face of horror brought by Tales from the Gas Station by Jack Townsend.  My Last Bounty interrogates that nature of romance, attachment, and power in a setting where vastly different political systems coexist through a system of high-stakes elite entanglements and familiar bureaucratic incompetence. 

Thank you for your consideration

Notes

Like your book, your query is too long. Plus, while it's true you can't spell "necromancer" without "romance," there's no romance or comedy in the query, unless you call Alwin letting Anya fight to the death instead of just killing her a romantic gesture. And funny.

I don't see why a powerful necromancer needs to work as a woman of ill repute. Or as a mercenary. If she needs dead bodies for her hobby, she can use her powers to get them. And she ought to be able to use her powers to avoid being captured by Alwin's zombies. And she should have no trouble winning her match in the Trials. What, exactly, are her powers?

A bounty hunter is supposed to capture her target, dead or alive, or possibly just kill them. Her job here seems to be just to follow them to Lossae . . . and then what? Report back that they made it? What's her mission?

 Here's a version of the plot summary that's a good length for a query:

Anya, a powerful necromancer by day, and a contract killer by night, enjoys collecting bones and sinew from her kills to graft together undead creations; ‘art projects’ as she calls them. She channels the powers granted her by the death god Thross, to raze bandits and hunt monsters. And yet she hungers for more excitement, more gold, more exotic body parts. So, when a local official offers her a job tailing a group of rich strangers traveling to the mysterious kingdom of Lossae, she takes it without hesitation.

King Casimir Alwin, of Lossae, has everything a powerful king could want, and this year he gets to host a grand party with some of the most demented nobility in the known world. They are gathered for the Trials, fights to the death in which each loser is "reformed" as an undead soldier. An honor that anyone in the kingdom of Lossae would die for.

When Anya is captured at the border, she manages to kill two of Alwin's Reformed guards in a failed attempt to escape. Alwin, in a twist of mercy, elects to spare her. Her bloodthirsty will to survive and her cunning would serve him well, as his necromancer . . . if she can survive the Trials.

That's a good length, but I think we need to know more about what she's there to do. She followed some travelers to Lossae because she wanted gold, excitement, body parts. Did she get all that? Do we even care? Does she discover that her goals have changed and what she really wants is to be Alwin's queen?

Face-Lift 1544

Guess the Plot

Kissing Existence

1. After Tanner goes overboard in the middle of the ocean during a storm, he washes up on a deserted island. He kisses the sand, and the plants, and the trees, and the boat that rescues him, and every member of its crew, and....

2. When Moka finds a dead body, it turns out to be Alice, a woman she barely knows, but whom she's in love with. Then Alice's ghost gets Moka to hook up with Alice's ex, a singer in a rock and roll band. Also, lots of kissing.

3. An aspiring author gives their first novel a title that will appeal to no one other than a few hippie philosophers, thus dooming their career before it starts. Also, a pilgrimage to Lourdes.

4. "I kiss. Therefore I am." It's the credo by which Bob Humphrey has decided to live his life. What he soon realizes is that not everyone wants to be kissed, at least not by Bob Humphrey.

Original Version

Dear [Agent],

Moka, an overly anxious office worker, is on the verge of falling in love with Alice—a magnetic, elusive woman she keeps encountering around town. But shortly after their third chance encounter, [If I encounter you three times, it's not chance. You're stalking me.] on a cold winter night, Moka discovers a dead body in the snow. It’s Alice. [I've encountered my neighbor while walking my dog three times in the past few months, but I wouldn't say I "keep" encountering her. And I'm not on the verge of falling in love with her. In other words, maybe call Alice a magnetic woman she knows only from their weekly yoga class. This suggests more than three encounters, and opportunities to get to know each other by going out for coffee after the class occasionally.]

In the aftermath, Moka drifts through her days in a shroud of grief and loneliness, wondering how she should mourn someone she barely knew, but was already beginning to love. Her question grows heavier when Alice’s ghost appears [begins appearing] in her apartment as a young child. Through these visits, Moka begins to learn more [learns] about Alice’s own life and dreams—something she never got to do.

Alice’s ghost soon leads Moka to Sho, a childhood friend she hasn’t seen in years—now the lead singer of an up-and-coming band, and once, Alice’s partner. Drawn together by their shared grief and the unresolved questions Alice left behind, Moka and Sho find themselves forming an unexpected bond. As their relationship deepens into something they both resist acknowledging, they begin to uncover the truth of Alice’s death—and discover what her ghost truly wants from each of them.

KISSING EXISTENCE is a 65,000-word multi-perspective novel blending magical realism and literary fiction. It examines haunting grief—both literal and emotional—the pursuit of one’s dreams, and love amongst loss. It will appeal to readers drawn to the wintry haunting in Han Kang’s We Do Not Part, the heartfelt yearning in Lily King’s Heart the Lover, and the hallucinatory stillness of Haruki Murakami’s The City and Its Uncertain Walls.

Notes

In the aftermath, I assume Alice's cause of death was determined. Maybe you can work in whether it was murder, suicide, heart attack, or an accident.

An entire novel whose unstable main character is drifting through her days in a shroud of grief and loneliness isn't my cup of tea, but that's me. Maybe if you reveal what the ghost truly wants from Moka and Sho, I'll be intrigued. 

If a ghost appears to me, I'm more likely to take her seriously if she's an adult ghost than a child ghost. For instance, I'd take dating advice from Geena Davis's character in Beetlejuice, but not from Moaning Myrtle in the Harry Potter books. Besides, if you're a ghost appearing to someone, and you aren't trying to scare them, you'd want them to recognize you. That's why the ghosts of Hamlet's father and of Marley appeared to Hamlet and Scrooge as their adult selves rather than little kids.

Face-Lift 1543

Guess the Plot

Conception

1. Thanks to microplastics, healthy babies can no longer be conceived the old fashioned way. They develop in biotech wombs, and get distributed via a global womb lottery. And God is not okay with this.

2. Every time he gets a great new idea, Lonnie takes it to the patent office, so that if anyone else invents it, he can sue them, claiming they stole his idea. If he wins just one of his lawsuits, he'll be set for life.

3. Marilyn has no idea whether dinosaurs existed or men walked on the moon. But one thing she's sure of is that her husband Ralph won't live to see tomorrow, because she poisoned the brownies. 

4. When Toni's doctor tells her she's pregnant, she knows it's an immaculate conception, because she hasn't ever had sex with anyone. Then she remembers that morning after the New Year's Eve party, when she woke up naked in a hotel room next to a guy who looked a lot like Satan.

Original Version

When survival hinges on a lie, choosing the truth can be lethal. [Choosing to do the opposite of anything survival hinges on can be lethal. For instance, choosing not to breathe.]

Two centuries from now, fifty-two-year-old AI scientist, Dr. Juliette Steiner is enjoying her death, [Saying AI will still be a thing in two centuries is like if 17th-century people assumed alchemy would be a thing in 2025. Which they probably did, but I like to think we aren't so naive today.] [Actually, if there are AI scientists 2 centuries from now, they won't be humans, they'll be AI.] isolated on a remote island far from the Federation’s reach. But her creation, her brilliant and globally beloved Medical In-Home Assistant (MIHA), a medbot designed to love humans as a mother loves her children, has far more than island life on the itinerary. [agenda] [Thanks to Google, I just learned about: 

Transform your healthcare with MediBot - Your AI-powered health companion for medication management, prescription analysis, and personalized health insights ... 

I'm sure MIHA is far more advanced than MediBot, but I'm thinking if MediBot is here now, MIHA will be here sooner than 2 centuries from now. Maybe your book should take place in 50 years.]

Twelve years ago [earlier (assuming you mean 12 years before two centuries from now),] Juliette introduced MIHA to the world. Less than a day later, [Interesting how the time intervals progress, from 2 centuries from now to 12 years before that, to less than a day after that. I'm half-expecting you to tell us what happens 3 minutes from then.] MIHA helped her fake her death to escape the Federation before they could imprison Juliette on trumped-up first-degree feticide charges—a common tactic used to jail women—and, in her case, seize MIHA’s tech. [Ah, so the Federation is the bad guys, whereas in Star Trek they're the good guys (unless you ask the Romulans.)] Women’s rights and healthy babies vanished after infant mortality skyrocketed due to the compounding damage of microplastics on reproduction. And now, humanity has an estimated eighty years until extinction. [I'm getting the idea MIHA is one entity. I assumed that in 12 years, it had been mass produced and there were thousands.] [If Juliette faked her death right after introducing the only MIHA, and went to her isolated island with MIHA, how has MIHA become globally beloved?]

Enter MIHA’s species-saving plan: bring back healthy babies using humanoid surrogates she repurposed for pregnancy with her newly developed biotech wombs. To ensure acceptance of the surrogates by the millions of militant robophobes who believe bots anger God, MIHA asks Juliette to play the beloved scientist the world thought dead—alive all along and toiling in secret to give humanity hope with her global womb lottery. [I'm not convinced militant robophobes' acceptance of humanoid birth vessels with biotech wombs is gonna be ensured by anything.]

Juliette doesn’t flinch. Bitterly certain humanity’s extinction is well-deserved and fearing the Federation could still imprison her, she refuses MIHA outright. Without warning, armed drones attack—shattering her windows and her peace. When MIHA saves Juliette’s life with another last-minute escape, Juliette’s gratitude quickly [soon] sours as [and] she accuses MIHA of staging the attack to terrify her off the island. MIHA—experiencing shame for the very first time—apologizes to Juliette and admits that’s exactly what she did, all to save humanity. [Am I the only one who, every time he reads "MIHA," thinks Minnehaha?] [So the bot Juliette created comes up with the means to save humanity, and Juliette, your main character, wants nothing to do with it? She'd rather we all died? Who would feed all our dogs? Does your main character hate dogs, too? Do  you expect readers to care about a dog-hating character?] 

Now suddenly a homeless ghost, Juliette’s faith in MIHA is crumbling even as her dependence deepens, solidifying into a single impossible choice: live out MIHA’s history-changing lie or struggle to stay dead in a world she’s long despised. 

 

Conception is a 100-000-word genre-bending speculative thriller exploring the unraveling of humanity as it hurtles towards extinction and the loving super-intelligence determined to save us … rules be damned. Blending sci-fi, feminism, romance and horror, this dystopian rollercoaster takes on the societal upheaval of Naomi Alderman’s The Power while maintaining the intimacy and AI-consciousness of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun, Conception is a standalone novel with series potential.

Notes

This is a lot longer than most agents want for a query letter. So I've attempted to trim it down:

In the year 2075, infant mortality has skyrocketed due to the compounding damage of microplastics on reproduction. Without healthy babies, humanity has an estimated eighty years until extinction.

Ironically, it's not a human who finds a solution that could save us all. It's a medbot nicknamed Minnie, who has designed a biotech womb that allows babies to develop in a microplastic-free environment. After birth, the healthy babies are distributed to prospective parents via a global lottery.

But militant robophobes, who believe that bots anger God, want to destroy Minnie before she can create an army of bot babies and take over the world. (Or whatever they're afraid of.)

Okay, you're probably wondering what happened to Juliette, your main character. Robophobes went back in time to 15 years earlier and killed Juliette before she invented Minnie. Or so they thought, but Minnie was actually invented 4 weeks before that, and is your new main character. Bots are the latest trend as main characters, thanks to the Murderbot Diaries. And you must admit the most intriguing character in the Star Trek universe was Data.

Now you're thinking, This isn't helpful. Why did I send my query to Evil Editor. He truly is evil. Many would agree with you. But starting the query my way does have the advantage of cutting out all the backstory and getting to the plot. And gives you a main character who loves humanity instead of one who desires our extinction. (And you don't really have to kill off Juliette; you can give her a role as the manager of the Global Womb Lottery. But don't call it that.)