The author of the book whose query appeared in Face-Lift 1439 would like feedback on the following revision of the plot summary.
Guess the Plot
The Black Circle
Vallinore, a scholar dispatched to renegotiate a truce with a city ruled by a brutal king, [A city with a king? Wait, is this based on that TV show, The King of Queens?] was always marginalized due to her status as the emperor’s bastard. Fed up, she plans to abandon her duties post-mission and defect.
Rideroc, the city’s Lord Commander, is hell-bent on liberating his people from the king’s tyranny. He ropes in Vallinore’s unique expertise in ancient languages to track down the only artefact capable of toppling the king, going so far as to threaten war on her nation if she refuses to help. [Either you translate these cuneiform passages, or my city will attack your nation.] [The king rules a city, Vallinore hails from a nation, Vallinore's father is an emperor, presumably of an empire?
Vallinore doesn’t plan for [figure on] Rideroc’s gravitational pull. As they peel back layers of pretence and forge a deeper bond, a shocking prophecy emerges, thrusting Vallinore at [into] the centre of an ancient lineage and making her the target of the king’s plot to breed an army of magic-infused shapeshifters. [Whoa, just when I was thinking Roman Empire, it's become Galactic Empire.] [Though I must admit that was one of the most amazing sentences in query history.]
Rideroc and Vallinore must choose whether to flee and protecting Vallinore from the King’s relentless pursuit, or risk everything in a daring attempt to liberate the city.
THE BLACK CIRCLE is a dual POV Adult Romantic Fantasy complete at 118,000 words with series potential. It combines Jennifer L. Armentrout’s FALL OF RUIN AND WRATH's exploitative relationship between the protagonists and those in authority with Rebecca Yarros’s THE FOURTH WING’s enemies-to-lovers dynamic.
Thank you for your time and consideration,
Notes
Not clear to me why this scholar who has studied ancient languages is the target of a plot to create an army of shapeshifters. Is "target of" the right phrase? Maybe "key to"? What does the shocking prophecy predict, exactly? That a woman will arrive in the city and translate some Sanskrit glyph instructions on how to create thousands of magical shapeshifters?
Lord Commander Rideroc sounds like the perfect name for your villain. Your hero should be the king's son, Prince Lenny.
Also, Rideroc sounds a lot like Roderick.
Vallinore plans to defect . . . to where? The brutal king's city?
You call this a romantic fantasy, but there's little about romance here, just a vague mention of forging a bond and a gravitational pull (that Vallinore somehow feels right after Rideroc threatens war with her nation).
Rideroc: Do as I ask, or my army will invade your country.
Vallinore: Are you seeing anyone?
If you can get the romance angle in earlier it would help:
Dispatched to negotiate a truce with a city ruled by a brutal king, Vallinore meets with the city’s handsome Lord Commander, Rideroc, who is hell-bent on liberating his people from the king’s tyranny. Rideroc makes a bad first impression, threatening war on Vallinore's nation unless she helps him topple the king. But though Rideroc seems like a real a-hole, Vallinore can't help finding him lovable, sort of like Hugh Grant.
Wait, replace that last line with: But though Vallinore finds Rideroc lacking in social graces, she can't help admiring his passion for helping his people--not to mention his ripped 6'3" frame. No, not quite that, but we're getting closer.
A Graveyard of Scarecrows
1. A sacred order of warriors must rise up against the Crow King in order to thwart his campaign to collect and hoard all the shiny things.2. Set in a cornfield, this YA dystopian narrative pits the adolescent scions of two farming communities against each other. Slowly, their hatred increases until the Porker family and the Beefy family start sending out spies to take out each others mascots... the titular scarecrows.
3. There is a graveyard where even a murder of crows will not go. It's spookier than any other graveyard. It's the graveyard where all the actors who've ever played Scarecrow in The Wiz are buried.
4. Everything has a place to go when it dies, even things which weren't originally alive. As far as Bubba was concerned, the remains of scarecrows weren't near as creepy as the remains of mannequins. But that was before they rose up seeking Brraaaiiiinnnnnssssss.
5. Edgar puts scarecrows in the graveyard where he's caretaker to keep ravens from carrying the souls of the dead to hell. Betsy Lou doesn't mind being dead, but it's crowded here now that the ravens aren't coming. Crowded with souls of the Wicked Ones.
6. There have been 457 sequels of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, but never a prequel. Until now.
7. When Billy hears about that little town in America where scarecrows come alive at night, he takes a road trip to spy on them and elevate his TikTok game. However, the travel brochure from the truck stop didn’t mention their taste for human flesh.
8. A horrible storm has wiped out half of Aaron's crops and killed most of his family. But when the weather clears, he turns tragedy into triumph by stuffing straw into what few scraps of his family's clothing he can find and starting an internet scarecrow store.
9. When a controversial statue disappears from a college campus, the city is thrown into chaos. Possibly because there aren't enough funds available to replace the statue. They could afford to replace it with a scarecrow, but no one has the guts to bring that idea up.
Original Version
Dear X,
Guess the Plot
Original Version
Dear Evil Editor
The Plan of the Silence
1.
2. Ssshhhhhhhhhh! We're planning here. Quiet!
3. They say two can keep a secret if one of them is dead. Except the local necromancer didn't get the message, and she has been raising the dead without permission and all sorts of dirty secrets are coming to light.
4. The Silence has a plan. It can't tell anyone because, well, it is The Silence. An introduction to outside-the-box thinking for young children.
5. When Bob loses his hearing, he loses his religion. No point in attending church services if you can't hear. But then he discovers that the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls. And tenement halls.
6. Abby arrives on her first day as a professional babysitter with a bag full of props and a plan. Breakfast, then story time, then arts and crafts, lunch and then a nap. Simple. Hours of screaming, crying and bickering later, she goes home defeated. But she is a fast learner: on her second day she has a whole new plan, and the only prop she needs is a roll of duct tape.
7. When God informs televangelist Oral Ditterbund the end of the world is nigh, Oral prepares for a live broadcast. But his plan to save humanity is thwarted when a robed man breaks into his mansion wielding a knife. Can Oral still get the word out with no tongue?
8. A sentient patch of fog with the ability to block all sound decides to drive humanity insane and take over the world by forcing people to endure…The Silence. However, modern attention spans being what they are, this takes about ten seconds and now the fog has a whole afternoon to kill.
9. Step 1: Be quiet. Step 2:
We would like to submit our satire science fiction novel, THE PLAN OF THE SILENCE, a standalone witih [Typo in sentence 1. Not a good sign.] series potential, complete at 128,000 words for your consideration. THE PLAN is Dan Brown's absurd Illuminati who live in the world of Qixin's THREE BODY PROBLEM and fight aliens with Berg’s GRM. BRAINFUCK methods, who [and] find themselves in a grim multiverse version of the DISCWORLD. [In my opinion, it's a rare reader who'll be familiar with all of those references. Also, Qixin's world plus discworld = I couldn't decide which world to say it's set in.]
(Sentence on why did we choose this specific agent).
The story follows Freya Axelsen, an Instagram business coach, who has to use her skills in productivity and positive thinking to save the world from alien invaders, the AI and the Deep State.
Freya's life spirals out of control when a private video of her goes viral. But before it jeopardizes her reputation and career, Manhattan is transported to another world. Suddenly, animals can speak, [You'd be surprised how many agents put talking animals near the top of their lists of dealbreakers.] [Also, transporting one person to the planet below failed so often on Star Trek, it's hard to buy transporting a place with a million people and a couple hundred skyscrapers anywhere.] the grid is down, and the city island is surrounded by the endless sea. Trying to escape her home, [Escape to where? Her home? Does she have transportation?] Freya is met by the Deep State agents, who treat her as Roman the Pruner, the State’s ruler. They follow their protocol and sure that Freya is Roman despite the obvious gender mismatch—and Freya ventures to steal the show. [What is entailed in stealing the show? That's too vague.]
Choosing to assume Roman’s role, Freya has an eventful night: she commands the Delta-Null order of Deep State’s assassins, harnesses the State’s AI Prophet, and fends off an attack by Gathers—looters of dead worlds, who have arrived at Manhattan to nibble. However, as the first rays of dawn appear, the Deep State uncovers Freya's deception. To survive, Freya chooses to join the Illuminati, [Your 2nd sentence says your book is Dan Brown's absurd Illuminati, but you've taken a long time to get to them.] the State’s servants. [Is the State also the Deep State? Or are they two different things?]
She meets other Illuminati: Mister K, [who calls himself that because nobody can pronounce Krzyzewski] the leader of the Deep State, and Dr. Ferdrehels, who researches the new world and its dwellers. [I can't tell if Ferdrehels is a Manhattanite researching the world he just landed in, or someone from that world researching Manhattan. Luckily, I don't care.] She learns that such Merges with other worlds constantly occur, and the Deep State exists to conceal this Truth. In her new role, Freya intends to rescue the people of Manhattan, but instead, she finds herself protecting the secrets of the State—and she has good reason to.
If the Truth about the State spills, all the Manhattan will be swiftly annihilated by the AI Prophet. Furthermore, there is strife within the Deep State itself. Most of the Illuminati have been wiped out, and the Illuminate-defector Ronald Thrump, [Seriously? The guy's equally likely to sue you for that fake name, so you may as well just use his actual one . . . Ronald McDonald.] who escaped to his Tower, is playing his own game. Freya appears to be a black swan, the only Illuminate out of the stalemate—[Whaaaaat?] so everyone has a plan for her.
When the fate of New York suddenly falls on her shoulders, Freya has nothing to wield against the collapsing world but her business coaching skills and productivity tips. [In other words, New York is doomed.] Will they be enough to defeat the ancient AI and the Gather Corporation? Or, she would [would she] be better off switching sides for Gathers, as the aliens are hardly scarier than the own State? [her own State? the Deep State?]
[Bio info]
Thank you for your time and consideration,
Notes
After spending my usual 4 hours on my critique, and realizing I was only 2/5 of the way through the query, I told myself, Screw this, the novel probably doesn't even exist. But then I thought, It might exist, and I'm legally required to give it my best.
This is twice as long as a query should be, and shouldn't be difficult to cut it in half, as much of it is unnecessary detail. Get rid of some of the characters, there are too many Just focus on Freya. Who is she, what does she want, what's her plan, what stands in her way? And make it clear why this Instagram business coach, among the million people (police, military veterans, professional wrestlers) who have been transported with her, is the only one who can save everyone. It's gotta be a better reason than her business coaching skills and productivity tips.
Get rid of Ronald. It's not especially funny. Besides, if Freya was still Freya after Manhattan was transported, why would Donald suddenly be Ronald? That may be explained in the book, but you don't have room to explain it in the query, so don't bring it up.
Guess the Plot
A Lie of Omission
1. When Jennifer starts dating Kelley, she fails to say anything about her current engagement status (to 3 men & 1 woman), her current marital status (qualifies as bigamy in most states), and her current number of dependents (6 if you count granny). On the other hand, Kelley fails to tell her he flunked out of college, he's unemployed, and he's not even human.
2. "I had a vasectomy a long time ago." That was all Rob had to say, but he didn't, so Lydia wondered why she wasn't getting pregnant. Was it her fault? Not according to her doctor, and Rob won't get tested. He does, however, try to comfort Lydia by taking her shopping at a big box store.
3. For some time, Sondra has known the date her husband would die, but has never told him. The guilt over that lie of omission has been eating away at her, as she considers herself intensely honest. Would it help or hurt their marriage, she wonders, to tell him the date? And to tell him about the alibi she has carefully planned for that date? And about the gun she has purchased? It's the lying that's tearing her apart.
4. When Pinocchio says his nose will grow, he’s telling the truth. But he’s omitting the part about it growing only when he lies. So does his lie of omission then cause his nose to grow, but in the process thereby turning it into the truth? This and other fairy tale paradoxes guaranteed to make your children's brains ache.
5. Elizabeth has been acting as Queen Regent for 16 years. Now rumors are swirling about the next king to be. As the rumors go wildly out of control, how can she explain to her subjects that there isn't, and never was, an heir?
6. John got laid off from his job two years ago, but has failed to inform his wife, Annie, of this. He's more than replaced his lost income by selling opiates and heroin on street corners. Now that the economy has picked up, John's former boss wants him back. Should John take the offer, even though he's now making twenty times his original salary?
7. Omission realizes she’ll never get published after a literary agent throws a sheaf of papers that is her manuscript in her face and screams "fool!" But when she meets a magical little man who lives under a rainbow, she’ll do anything he says to make her dream come true.
8. Your field guide to dishonesty.