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Lol my 1000 word reverse outline is 1500 words  e: but it was a very helpful exercise!!
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Aug 21, 2021 18:30
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I have the opposite issue, my scenes are all too short... How do I tell what a scene is missing?
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Aug 21, 2021 21:55
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Have you tried some zazz? Maybe some oomph? Otherwise, probably explosions.
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Aug 21, 2021 23:02
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Sexy explosions. 
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Aug 22, 2021 06:52
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Psychomax posted:I have the opposite issue, my scenes are all too short... How do I tell what a scene is missing? In case this was a serious question: One issue that might be happening is that the scene is all action. It moves from one action to another and another which progresses the narrative but not necessarily the character development/other plot points. You might think more closely about who your characters are, what they would be noticing, how they would be feeling and reacting to whatever is going on. Not only does this add to the interest of helping the reader understand what the characters are going through, it might also lead to a few more actions. Example: based on who Jim is as a character, he hates confrontation and so instead of walking into a scene to get the necessary plot conversation encounter he needs in this chapter and getting out with minimal words, he agonizes over having to meet a person, he practices what he might say that will make him out to be the better person, and then doesn't actually do any of that when he finally musters up the courage to face the conversation. Just a simple example, but it tells the reader a lot about Jim, still advances the plot and gives you, the author a lot more words to flesh out the chapter. This can still be done if you're trying to keep scenes short, you just have to judicious about the exact words. A sentence here or there that does double or triple duty with description. If this is not your problem, ignore!
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Aug 22, 2021 11:16
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Psychomax posted:I have the opposite issue, my scenes are all too short... How do I tell what a scene is missing? I stole this from Jim butcher, the scene/sequel sequence here is what I'm trying to plan out for this scene I'm writing. Hit all of these points and you have a minimum scene. It doesn't have to be complicated see example: POINT OF VIEW: Muk GOAL: Show how Freya is doing from an outsider POV in this suitor mess CONFLICT: Muk doesn’t like the cobbler brothers, and they are stepping on each others toes SETBACK: Freya agrees to promenade with both a cobbler brother and Muk Sequel 1) EMOTIONAL REACTION: Muk realizes that she is taking the middle of the road path 2) REVIEW, LOGIC, & REASON: I would probably hedge my bets as well, muk says 3) ANTICIPATION: This will be an interesting season 4) CHOICE: he chooses to write her a letter
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Aug 22, 2021 15:25
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I've found that I start writing in a very minimal way and have just started iterating to put "meat on the bones" so to speak. So I ask myself, why should anyone care about these plot beats? Why should they care about the characters? What would get readers more emotionally invested? That's helped me to flesh out the cast, beyond just being pawns to keep the story moving forward. Adding dialog to have the cast interact and show-don't-tell has helped too. This is my first attempt at a novel, fwiw, but I'm happy with the results so far.
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Aug 25, 2021 16:00
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Good job, keep after it!
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Aug 25, 2021 17:59
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I was looking for book recommendations and found a website called Reedsy: http://reedsy.com It claims to network you to freelance editors and help with publishing contracts. Has anyone else heard of this?
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Aug 29, 2021 23:04
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HIJK posted:I was looking for book recommendations and found a website called Reedsy: http://reedsy.com It claims to network you to freelance editors and help with publishing contracts. Has anyone else heard of this? I just got my dev editor through them for my military science fiction book. She had a bunch of great reviews but I expect it back in October so, we’ll see.
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Aug 29, 2021 23:57
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Interesting, I'll bookmark them for future reference. Thank you!
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Aug 30, 2021 00:54
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Hey, y’all, I need blurb writing help. I figured I’d try here first and then swing by the self-publishing thread, too. Here is my original blurb:quote:A divided city. A killer who stalks the border between two worlds. Any thoughts? I feel like there’s some awkward phrasing in there.
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Sep 12, 2021 15:30
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As blurbs go that's not too bad! I think if you want to really streamline it you could try to untangle some of the dependent clauses. The biggest problem for me (and this stuff is always very subjective, so, take with a grain of salt) is that it's a little too generic.quote:A divided city. A killer who stalks the border between two worlds. Maybe something about your protagonist? 'A woman who must cross that border to stop him/her/them? What're the stakes for our heroine? Just proving she deserves to be a detective? I dunno, spitballing. General Battuta fucked around with this message at 16:08 on Sep 12, 2021 |
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Sep 12, 2021 16:05
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Very helpful. Thanks! Let me work on this and I’ll get a new version up. Biggest issue: I’m not sure I can add anything more substantial about the conspiracy without spoiling the plot. Was even considering not mentioning a conspiracy because that spoils a little.
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Sep 12, 2021 16:35
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Are you aiming this for agents, or readers? It's better to spoil too much than to sound boring.
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Sep 12, 2021 18:04
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Readers. Yeah, you’re right. Changed it a tiny bit (I’m terrible at these things!): quote:A divided city. A killer who stalks the border between two worlds. A woman desperate to prove herself. I really can’t think of a way to be less generic about the conspiracy without spoiling the main murder plot. I’ll work on it. newts fucked around with this message at 18:51 on Sep 12, 2021 |
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Sep 12, 2021 18:05
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newts posted:Readers. Yeah, you’re right. Blurbs are the toughest thing you can write. If you can, get your beta readers to summarize the novel for you, and use their summary as a guide to highlight what's interesting. Reading through your blurb this is what I get Lucia has no wants. ("prove herself?) Lucia's life is at stake. There is a weird world with psychic humans, and there is a border of some kind? (Physical border, a trump wall? A magical border?) There is a conspiracy. Two peoples conflict? (Like two races fighting each other or literally tom and jerry conflict?) What city? Why do I care? It's not bad. I have a couple of good questions caused by interest, and a couple of bad questions caused by confusion. You might want to highlight the conflict between humans and psychics, (Without literally telling us), so we can understand why Sam Rush is an important character. The last bit of the blurb is... cliched. "Despite her fears" "Deeper into a conspiracy" "threatens both their lives" are pretty much used in every thriller book I have read. While it lets your reader know what type of book this is, I would find a way to give the last bit of the blurb a voice.
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Sep 12, 2021 20:04
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newts posted:I really can’t think of a way to be less generic about the conspiracy without spoiling the main murder plot. I’ll work on it. I’m not sure you need to mention the conspiracy at all TBH, as someone who read your book. The stakes at the beginning that hooked me are the upcoming negotiations for reconciliation that are providing a ticking clock and extra importance to the case. This is set up super early and spoils nothing if you want to use it instead.
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Sep 13, 2021 01:42
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DropTheAnvil posted:Blurbs are the toughest thing you can write. If you can, get your beta readers to summarize the novel for you, and use their summary as a guide to highlight what's interesting. Thanks! Good points. I’ll see how I can get some of these answers in there, or clear up what’s written. quote:The last bit of the blurb is... cliched. "Despite her fears" "Deeper into a conspiracy" "threatens both their lives" are pretty much used in every thriller book I have read. While it lets your reader know what type of book this is, I would find a way to give the last bit of the blurb a voice. Ha! I’m actually going for cliched here because readers seem to know what they’re getting. I’ll try to mix it up a little. So it’s not quite so blah. kaom posted:I’m not sure you need to mention the conspiracy at all TBH, as someone who read your book. The stakes at the beginning that hooked me are the upcoming negotiations for reconciliation that are providing a ticking clock and extra importance to the case. This is set up super early and spoils nothing if you want to use it instead. I hadn’t thought of that, thanks! Good idea. It seems complicated to explain in a blurb, but I’ll see what I can do. A long blurb is probably fine for the ebook version, anyway. I’ve seen people with five paragraphs.
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Sep 13, 2021 13:45
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I hope you don’t mind, but I took a stab at rewriting your blurb with absolutely no more knowledge of your book. Obviously, I’ve had to take a lot of liberties with the details and make some assumptions about how things play out, but hopefully the intention behind the changes comes through.quote:Lucia Kowalski made a huge mistake in her first year as a detective — and found herself exiled to a new beat in Settingville, a violent city that straddles the world of humans and the mysterious, psychic Sleepers. In short: I think your blurb needed a bit more emphasis on the character, which I’ve established here with a bit of backstory that helps inform her motivations (she’s been exiled to this lovely place and needs to take a big risk to prove herself — borrowing liberally from Hot Fuzz, here). I’ve also added a bit more detail to her partner, who I’m assuming here is both a Sleeper (it’s not completely clear from your blurb) and also possibly has a bit of a sketchy past themselves. I’ve kept a lot of the cliched language because, yeah, I see why you’re using it and I think in the context of a blurb that needs to get info across really quickly and clearly, cliches are somewhat justified. Mostly I did this just as a fun exercise for myself, so if you do get anything out of this, all the better  (I’m also not a fan of my new first line, but hopefully you can see what I’m going for, at least) rohan fucked around with this message at 00:06 on Sep 14, 2021 |
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Sep 13, 2021 13:56
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That sounds like a better book than the one I wrote! Thanks! This actually helps a lot.
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Sep 14, 2021 03:44
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Workshopped a story recently that received really good feedback and I'm in the process of painstakingly editing it. The story is first person literary fiction in the past tense. There's points where a sentence describes something in the past tense (what happened that day, in the past) but then makes a global statement in the present tense (what happens always). Not sure if there is a technical name for it, but to give you an idea (not from the story), something like: The weather was bad. It always rains in July. So in the my workshop draft, the second sentence of the story was: story posted:The earth labored in the clutch of mid-August humidity, where the air drips, shade offers no balm, and the thermometer reads the same at noon as it does at midnight. The idea being, again, the earth labored that day, but the air drips in all humid August days. At least one reader got hung up on tense. Also, my wife pointed out 'where' should be 'when', which seems like it has to be correct but feels slightly weird. If I put it in past tense, it feels wrong. But I can't say exactly why. story posted:The earth labored in the clutch of mid-August humidity, where/when the air dripped, shade offered no balm, and the thermometer read the same at noon as it did at midnight. I'm at the point where I've stared at the words so long they've started to lose meaning and could use another set of eyes. Some other examples of whatever you call the past/present split from the story: quote:He clapped me on the back with his free hand and I returned the gesture. We do not shake hands here. quote:His ranch house lay a mile down narrow trails snaking through the pine forest, labyrinthine at first, until you realize that all paths lead to the pond's fragrant shores
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Sep 15, 2021 17:12
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So, that earth example is a stumper for sure—I don’t know if I can untangle that. But for the other two, I’d prefer a past tense for the whole thing: He clapped me on the back with his free hand and I returned the gesture. We did not shake hands here. His ranch house lay a mile down narrow trails snaking through the pine forest, labyrinthine at first, until you realized that all paths led to the pond's fragrant shores. I don’t know, it just reads more easily to me. The only place where I wouldn’t mind what you have, is if you’ve got weird narrative stuff going on: a narrator telling a story that jumps in time or other timeline strangeness.
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Sep 15, 2021 17:27
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I think newts is right about keeping it past tense. I didn’t find a name for this, stating facts when in past tense, but I do know that’s what you’re supposed to do when essay writing (e.g., “one plus one equals two”). However it definitely reads weird in the samples posted, and I think what’s happening is that the present tense reads like it’s the author’s POV rather than the character’s. If the narrative is told from one character’s POV, this takes the reader out of the story. My suggestion is to find another way of expressing the difference in current action and facts, such as: Story posted:The earth labored in the clutch of mid-August humidity, where the air always dripped, shade offered no balm, and the thermometer read the same at noon as it did at midnight. I also think “where” might be fine here since the subject of the clause is the humidity, not August. Story posted:He clapped me on the back with his free hand and I returned the gesture. No one shook hands here. It’s possible something along these lines would read clearer?
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Sep 15, 2021 18:17
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In my opinion and the two above me will attest to this, always write to be as clear as possible. No two sentences in english should mean the same thing. Also write to make it as easy as possible for the reader to read, like in newts book it’s pretty clear what we know and don’t knkw but the inquiry keeps me turning pages(also hot tovrash sex jokes)
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Sep 15, 2021 23:29
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ultrachrist posted:Workshopped a story recently that received really good feedback and I'm in the process of painstakingly editing it. The story is first person literary fiction in the past tense. There's points where a sentence describes something in the past tense (what happened that day, in the past) but then makes a global statement in the present tense (what happens always). Not sure if there is a technical name for it, but to give you an idea (not from the story), something like: The weather was bad. It always rains in July. The usage of 'where' in the original isn't formal but it also doesn't need to be. That said, while I recognize that the comma after 'humidity' in the original version might reflect your intended syncopation it also makes it less clear if what comes after is an expansion on the idea of mid-August humidity or if it's an addendum to your description of the earth. It's significantly clearer (to me) if you remove it. 'Where/when' in the past tense version feels, to me, wrong, because it's signalling something that no longer happens. In the original sentence it's part of an (informal) speech pattern signalling that you've gone from telling me something about the earth to expanding on what mid-August humidity is like. In the past-tense sentence that distinction is no longer present and the 'where/when' is now out of place. Without the where/when it doesn't bother me but I also then read it as an expansion of your description of the earth. White Chocolate posted:In my opinion and the two above me will attest to this, always write to be as clear as possible. [...] I'm not sure I've ever enjoyed a work of fiction that dedicated itself to both of these things and I'm not sure something can be accurately described as literary fiction (which is what ultrachrist called it) if it does both of these things. The bible is only literature if you aren't a literalist. Wallet fucked around with this message at 00:40 on Sep 16, 2021 |
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Sep 16, 2021 00:29
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Wallet posted:The usage of 'where' in the original isn't formal but it also doesn't need to be. Whoops literary fiction flew over my head. Okay, I just think write how you want, but get feedback in a workshop setting.
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Sep 16, 2021 01:55
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Yes, it's literary fiction and already workshopped. I'm following a rule where if more than one person flagged something, I change it. Only one person flagged this case and only on that first sentence, so I didn't really ask to discuss it. But then my wife read it and also flagged it and I'm anxious about it because it's the second sentence of the story. First impressions and all that. For context, it's about a man returning to his rural place of birth (after living in a city for several years) after his childhood best friend dies. He doesn't really belong in either place, so it's important which areas he includes himself in ("We do not shake hands") vs not. It takes place in multiple timelines but they're all in the past. There's never a present narrative moment, but there's a light sense that the protagonist is telling the story. He doesn't directly address the reader but there's asides, footnotes, and rhetorical questions. I suppose I feel this way about most first person narration though-- they're telling the story to someone. If not another character, then the reader. Thanks for the feedback. I'm not sure I've reached a conclusion, but you've all given me valuable things to think about. newts posted:I don’t know, it just reads more easily to me. The only place where I wouldn’t mind what you have, is if you’ve got weird narrative stuff going on: a narrator telling a story that jumps in time or other timeline strangeness. Honestly, I would like to be able to say "Past tense is simpler" and just do it. But those rewritten examples just feel off to me. I think it might be because of what Wallet is saying: it makes it feel as if those things happened in the past and don't happen anymore. Also probably the same reason kaom added "always" to the first sentence. kaom posted:It’s possible something along these lines would read clearer? These are really interesting rewrites. You've made them past tense without triggering my sense of "off" that I mentioned above. But for whatever reason, I also feel like the language distances us from the character and setting. Huh. Wallet posted:That said, while I recognize that the comma after 'humidity' in the original version might reflect your intended syncopation it also makes it less clear if what comes after is an expansion on the idea of mid-August humidity or if it's an addendum to your description of the earth. It's significantly clearer (to me) if you remove it. I get what you're saying and I absolutely over comma. I feel really unsure of the flow without the comma though. Feels like a mouthful. Trying it on for size. quote:The earth labored in the clutch of mid-August humidity where the air drips, shade offers no balm, and the thermometer reads the same at noon as it does at midnight.
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Sep 16, 2021 03:54
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ultrachrist posted:Honestly, I would like to be able to say "Past tense is simpler" and just do it. But those rewritten examples just feel off to me. I think it might be because of what Wallet is saying: it makes it feel as if those things happened in the past and don't happen anymore. Also probably the same reason kaom added "always" to the first sentence. I just meant that it's signalling that you're about to expand on what mid-August humidity is but you no longer do because the structure makes it read like you're just additionally describing the state of the earth, and the where/when is just a misplaced word and the tense is wonky. Commas can get a little weird when you're using them for both rhythm and syntax at the same time. I think you could also get away with a colon instead of where. quote:The earth labored in the clutch of mid-August humidity: the air drips, shade offers no balm, and the thermometer reads the same at noon as it does at midnight. Further afield you could also reformulate so the second bit doesn't need commas. quote:The earth labored in the clutch of mid-August humidity, where shade offers no balm in the dripping air and the thermometer reads the same at noon as it does at midnight. 
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Sep 16, 2021 04:15
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ultrachrist, hope I'm not late to the party. I think the issue in two of the examples is that they switch tenses without a strong grammatical signal such as "when" or a sentence break. Here, using past tense to focus on the events of the story seems better to me, but as you don't like that, you might try this kind of strong signal. Taking the "mid-August" sentence first, what about replacing "humidity" with a colon, or ending the sentence? Repeating the information immediately is awkward, and so's the "where", but then you might want to change the start of the sentence, which is a pity as it's strong; I think it really needs "mid-August's [something]" but I'm not sure what. Here's some sketches: quote:The earth labored in mid-August's clutch: the air dripped, shade offered no balm, and the thermometer read the same at noon as it did at midnight. I think the "ranch house" sentence has the same problem. There's the "at first, until", too. If you want to keep using present tense, how about breaking it into two sentences? quote:His ranch house lay a mile down narrow trails snaking through the pine forest, labyrinthine until you realized that all the paths led to the pond's fragrant shores The "not shaking hands" example is already broken up, and present tense seems more comfortable stating an abstract fact than concrete ones, so I don't see a major issue there. Just a nitpick: like kaom, I thought "we" might be confusing; how about replacing it with "people"?
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Sep 17, 2021 03:50
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Safety Biscuits posted:ultrachrist, hope I'm not late to the party. Definitely not, will be polishing this for a while yet. I actually had been thinking over breaking it into two sentences after reading Wallet's suggestion about the colon. I'd arrived at your third line: The earth labored in the clutch of mid-August humidity. The air dripped, shade offered no balm, and the thermometer read the same at noon as it did at midnight. This was OK, but I didn't like the new rhythm of the paragraph and it also made it sound like this state of affairs was only that day and not all mid-August days. So I tried: quote:The earth labored in the clutch of mid-August humidity. Another day where the air dripped, shade offered no balm, and the thermometer read the same at noon as it did at midnight. Taking this idea further... quote:The earth labored in the clutch of mid-August humidity. The air dripped, shade offered no balm. Another stagnant day where the thermometer read the same at noon as it did at midnight. (maybe just cut the thermometer line, I guess) For context, since the first two examples are in the first two paragraphs, here's the beginning of the story. The (1) is a footnote. story posted:I trudged through the woods with a 2 x 4 x 96 whitewood stud slung across my shoulders. The earth labored in the clutch of mid-August humidity, where the air drips, shade offers no balm, and the thermometer reads the same at noon as it does at midnight. Sweat washed me, soiled me, then pooled in the soft hollows of my body. The stud dug into my skin and my neck throbbed under the dense pressure. When the pain reached a predetermined threshold, I switched positions so that the stud was tucked beneath my right arm with my left crossed over my body to keep it steady. The wood rubbed against my inner wrist, tempting hungry welts to rise from my skin and meet it. When, again, the pain reached the threshold(1), I slung the stud back over my shoulders. (Oh, I'm doing the tense thing again in the footnote) I've become uncertain about the ranch line. Might rework that in general. I also want to cut fragrant, maybe "waiting" is better. The name of the story is "The Pond, Again", so readers would know the pond is important in some way before reading the actual text. And here's the shaking hands paragraph. Even managed to work tense discussion into the narrative itself! story posted:“Hello Wayne.” I leaned the stud against the porch and climbed the unfinished wooden steps to meet him. He clapped me on the back with his free hand and I returned the gesture. We do not shake hands here. Wayne smelled of cigarettes, exhaust, dirt, sweat, B.O., and faintly of oil-- a variation on the cologne all men from my hometown wore when I was young. I suppose I should stop thinking of them in the past tense, as fossils calcified in my childhood. Not only are they still here, paws slick with grease, they’ve been here all this time-- tinkering, wearing out jeans, developing cancer. The world didn’t stop when I left. ultrachrist fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Sep 17, 2021 |
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Sep 17, 2021 17:51
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It's that time of year again where I'm jumping into the querying process, so I'd love some feedback on my most recent query if anybody's got the time. quote:Dear [Agent], Any feedback anybody can give would be much appreciated. Thanks!
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Sep 17, 2021 19:12
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Nae posted:Any feedback anybody can give would be much appreciated. Thanks! There’s a minor thing that jumped out at me, too: “she’s got a special connection” sounds more informal than everything else. Might be intentional, but if not maybe “she has” would be better at conveying the tone. (I’ve never submitted anything anywhere btw so take me with a grain of salt.) The vibe I’m getting is: - fantasy, can’t peg it to a specific category - significant romance component - a lovable rogue & an aloof enchantress - revenge (but this feels secondary to the romance) kaom fucked around with this message at 02:03 on Sep 18, 2021 |
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Sep 18, 2021 01:54
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Nae posted:It's that time of year again where I'm jumping into the querying process, so I'd love some feedback on my most recent query if anybody's got the time. I'd advise against leading with the passive voice. The first paragraph starts with two sentences worth of it and then closes on another. The cult killed his brother. Make it active, then make his responsive active. I'm no querying expert but I'm not sure about that swap to a second character. If the first guy shows up anyway, why not have him lead the transition to introduce the other character? And what's a wave of power? Am I correctly understanding that Anari intends to wipe out both humanity and chimera? "With less than two months until the summoning ceremony, Anari doesn’t need any distractions" ... "doesn't need any distractions" sounds like someone studying for an exam, not summoning a god to wipe out sapient life. I don't get how their goals are different either. They both seem to want to wipe out the chimera. Lastly, I don't really get a sense of either character. Like who they are. Makes it hard to care about the stakes.
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Sep 18, 2021 03:50
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Nae posted:It's that time of year again where I'm jumping into the querying process, so I'd love some feedback on my most recent query if anybody's got the time. quote:Three years ago, Senth Lantham was enjoying a carefree life of crime when he got word that his brother was murdered. After a short trip home and a long investigation, Senth has found the culprits: the Children of Kezzar, a cult of human-animal chimera who pray to a demonic god named Kezzar. In a perfect world, Senth would kill them all for what they did, but there are dozens of them and only one of him. To make them pay, he’ll have to take a different approach: join their ranks and destroy them from within. Took a pass at it which is the only way I know how to give feedback sorry quote:The outlaw Senth Lantham never gave a drat about right and wrong until the day his brother was murdered. And now he knows exactly who did it: the Children of Kezzar, a cult of human-animal chimera whose demonic god promises the extinction of all mankind. There's no question at all that they deserve to die. But how? Outnumbered and alone, Senth stakes his life on a terrible gamble—joining the Children to destroy them from within. If it's the last thing he ever does, so be it. He can't let his brother down. I don't understand enough about Anari's plans to understand why she and Senth can't just team up—don't they both want all these chimera to die? If he'd have problems with the whole 'destroying the world' plan she could just lie to him, right? And does she really not care if the whole world is destroyed?
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Sep 18, 2021 04:16
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Thank you all so much for the feedback! I can see how the last line is causing the most problems, along with the lack of voice/personality. The main reason that Senth and Anari can't both achieve their goals (which I'm realizing I didn't put into the query) is that summoning Kezzar requires a human sacrifice, and Senth doesn't want any more humans to die like his brother did. So for Kezzar to be summoned (Anari's goal), a human will have to die (Senth's fail state). Battuta, for your question: 'Does Anari really care if the world is destroyed?' Yes, she does, but she has other plans for Kezzar that only come out 2/3rds of the way through the book, so for most of the story, it comes across like she doesn't care at all and she just wants everyone to die. I'll take another crack at the letter and post what I come up with. Thanks again for all the help!
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Sep 18, 2021 05:09
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Glad to see you’re still writing, Nae. Maybe one day I can be as brave.
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Sep 18, 2021 05:18
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REMEMBER SPONGE MONKEYS posted:Glad to see you’re still writing, Nae. Maybe one day I can be as brave. It's not so bad after you get rejected enough times. Just kind of becomes status quo, I guess. Anyway, I banged around the query for another ten minutes, shamelessly taking parts from Battuta's rework in the process, and I think I came up with something that makes more sense and answers some of the questions. quote:Part-time criminal Senth Lantham never gave a drat about his family until the day his brother was murdered. Now he knows exactly who did it: the Children of Kezzar, a cult of human-animal chimera who plan to resurrect their demonic god through human sacrifice. There's no question that Senth must stop them from killing again. But how? Outnumbered and alone, he stakes his life on a terrible gamble—joining the Children to sabotage their ritual from within. If it's the last thing he ever does, so be it. He can't let the cultists tear another family apart. Note: if it seems like Anari's motivations in this query contradict the last one, that's kind of true. The story is written in dual-POV epistolary, so Anari's half of the letters have some real contradictions between what she's telling people she wants and what she actually wants. For the sake of clarity, I'm going with the motivations she gives others in this query, since they're the ones that are at the forefront for most of the book.
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Sep 18, 2021 05:36
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I’m a bit late to this, but I saw your initial query and couldn’t resist taking my own stab at it. As with my previous attempt, I’ve had to take some liberties with characterisation and events that I’m not clear on, but hopefully the intent comes through. I think the biggest problem in your first draft was definitely the question of how their motivations were at odds, and the second goes a way to resolving that, but I think if this “unreliable narrator” aspect of the epistolary format plays a strong part in disguising Anari’s true goals, there needs to be some indication of that in the query itself. quote:Senth Lantham, exiled from his homeland of [someplace] for thievery and deception three years earlier, is summoned back urgently with terrible news: his brother has been murdered by the Children of Kezzar, a cult of human-animal chimera who worship a demonic god. Outnumbered and alone, Senth will have to use the skills he’s acquired in exile to infiltrate their ranks and destroy them from within. Here, I’ve tried to give a bit more backstory to Senth and Anari to help establish their motivations — Senth is a criminal who’s particularly good at deception and trickery, Anari is somewhat held against her will by these violent cultists (I’m imagining “she’s already lost one family” implies they killed her birth family … ?). I think my changes here go some way to explaining how Senth is able to infiltrate the chimera, which is still an open question to me after your second draft, and sets up some organic tension between the two humans. I’m also hoping that “she alone knows Kezzar’s true motivations” alludes to her having her own plan for the summoning, but it’s difficult to establish this without being too obvious. (But then, this is a query letter, not a blurb.) I’m also assuming you mention it being an epistolary novel in the word count + comps section? rohan fucked around with this message at 08:51 on Sep 18, 2021 |
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Sep 18, 2021 08:49
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Nae posted:It's not so bad after you get rejected enough times. Just kind of becomes status quo, I guess. This is like ten miles better (and I’m not saying that because you used some of mine, the specific changes you made really really strengthened it). Now I actually want to read this. Well done.
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Sep 18, 2021 14:01
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