Face-Lift 1558

Guess the Plot

A Study of Hungers

1. This gastronomic history starts with paleolithic cannibalism, heads through a vegan quagmire of foraging, and returns to the variegated tastes altered by microplastics. You'll never look at food the same way again.

2. So you thought the free food samples at Costco were merely to tempt purchase behavior? Not hardly! Hidden cameras secretly record each shopper in a massive A.I. psychological experiment to exert mind control through manipulating the hungers of unsuspecting patrons so Costco can conquer the world!!

3. In a futuristic society where biological hunger is cured, citizens are legally required to develop absurd obsessions to fuel the economy. Professional "Craver" Arthur Pringle accidentally develops a passion for collecting dust, sparking a satirical revolution against a government desperate to keep everyone insatiably wanting absolutely nothing.

4. Ten main characters, each with their own hunger. One wants fame, others want money or sex, revenge, power, justice, etc. Their stories all converge. Also, global warming.

Original Version

Dear [agent], 

Please consider my debut novel: A STUDY OF HUNGERS. 90k words. Literary Suspense. Ten intimate, slow-burn character studies explore the sources and consequences of the hungers in our souls. Intricately woven into the backdrop of a sophisticated spy thriller, rapidly unfolding across four intense days.

 

Laurie’s hunger for earth justice drives her passionate quest to invent TAMAR, a miraculous cure for global warming. But she needs bête noir Peter to bring her creation from the lab to the world stage. Peter embraces the challenge, as TAMAR could catapult his startup to untold riches, feeding his hunger for entrepreneurial fame. Unless he fails to divine Simone’s treacherous game to weaponize TAMAR.

 

Simone’s hunger for manipulative conquest drives her instigation of a superpower bidding war for the corrupted TAMAR. But first, she must steal Laurie’s patent secrets. For this, Simone leans in on her tender alliance with Jade, whose hunger for erotic adventure is a perfect fit for their brazen blackmail of Peter’s gullible patent attorney, Eric. 

 

Yet exploiting Eric’s hunger for illusory fantasies is only step 1. Simone’s masterful double betrayal of Peter concludes with a duplicitous con of his beloved wife, Jenny. Through Simone’s dark bargain, Jenny’s hunger for revenge ultimately exposes the malevolent TAMAR, and the fate of the world, to Jenny’s true nemesis, her own father. [The fate of the world is in the hands of Jenny's father? He's the only character you haven't named. One minute he's a side character who's only in the book because his daughter married some advertising executive. The next minute he's Ernst Blofeld, and Simone, who I thought was the evil overlord, is just Oddjob.]

 

As each new protagonist is unwittingly drawn ever deeper into the rapidly tangling web, the swirl races toward dramatic conclusion at the symphony’s opening night gala. [Not sure what the "swirl" is. Should they be drawn into a whirlpool instead of a web?] Who may rise or fall shifts precariously with every turn. [Every turn of the page?] Each character must wrestle with the conflicts spawned by their own hungers.

 

Written to evoke the eloquently entwined renderings in Emily St. John Mandel's The Glass Hotel; [I asked Google what "eloquently entwined renderings" meant; it replied "intricately connected narratives." Not bad, but you can't use it because AI came up with it, and agents don't want anything AI, including queries.] the time-layered multi-point-of-view reveals of Liz Moore's The God of the Woods; and the exciting international intrigue of Daniel Silva's The Collector.

 

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Notes

Thank you for conservatively limiting the query to only the most important characters: Laurie, Peter, Simone, Jade, Eric, Jenny, Jenny's father, and, I assume, the symphony's conductor.

When you mention the hungers of our souls, I expect less specific hungers than earth justice, entrepreneurial fame, manipulative conquest, erotic adventure, illusory fantasies. 

I'm not crazy about focusing on everyone's "hunger." Naming each character and their hunger seems like an attempt to justify your title, which I'm also not crazy about, as it sounds like an academic treatise.

Everyone has their own goal or agenda, but it may be better to focus on this as a thriller. And two or three named characters is sufficient for the query.

Here's a general idea:

When Laurie invented TAMAR, a miraculous solution to global warming, she thought she was saving the planet. She didn't expect so many people in her orbit to want a piece of the action, from the publicist to the patent attorney to anonymous investors. And then there's Simone, who wants to steal Laurie's patent secrets and weaponize TAMAR in her quest for world domination.

When Laurie realizes that in the wrong hands TAMAR is more likely to destroy the planet than save it . . . 

Well, I don't know what she does, but you can tell us how she plans to save us all from Simone. Or Jenny's father. I'd go with Simone. You might also want to work in a more specific description of what TAMAR is/does.

Possibly this won't be an accurate description of your book, but if it gets an agent to read it, they'll be so captivated by your prose that they won't even remember your query.