Click here to read the original query.
Dear Agent:
Seventeen-year-old Kira Edwards can deal with her friend, Lydia, having two spirits—one of whom hates her—but when she finds out Lydia’s brother wants to eat her, well, that’s just not acceptable.
When Lydia is severely injured, Kira chooses to accept the Crystor, a magical healing charm that not only gives her the power to heal Lydia, but enhances Kira’s natural ability to sense danger. Good thing, because Lydia’s brother, Octavion, is the victim of an ancient curse that gives him the heart of a wild cat and if he can’t control his primal instincts, Kira may be his next victim. But Kira can see through his tough exterior and has a plan. If she can find a way to tame the beast raging within him, he might let her into his heart. If not, she’ll pay the ultimate price.
THE CRYSTOR is a YA paranormal romance at 103,000 words that has the potential to cross over into the New Adult market. It will appeal to the same audience as Shiver and Graceling.
The completed manuscript is available for your review.
Sincerely,
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
Very nice! Clean, concise, delivers the essentials of the story without getting bogged down in detail. I wonder about the bit about Lydia having two spirits, since it's not mentioned or explained further, but that's a minor thing. Overall, I think this is great. I'd read it.
Confusing, but interesting.
Lydia has two spirits: is she possessed or bipolar? Why two? And the Crystor heals this how? She accepts it from who? What is their role in this? Why does he give it to Kira?
Who cursed Octavion and how/why does that make him want to eat Kira? Or does he want to eat Lydia? It’s a little ambiguous with the “her”. How is she going to tame him? With the Crystor? Now I feel like we have two concurrent stories: Lydia helping Kira and Lydia helping Octavion.
This query left me with a lot of questions. It appears you’ve created an intricate plot and since it’s a fantastical story you have to be clearer with your imagined world or I, as the reader, go, “huh?”
I’m super-guilty of this same thing. I know the whole story in my head so I leave out key query details because I already know them and forget that others don’t.
I’m looking forward to the revision.
You've cut it down so far that now you have room to put some stuff back in. I'd like to know more about Kiva having two spirits if you're going to mention it at all (it doesn't seem necessary). What I'd really like to know, though, is more about Octavion, his curse, and what he's like. We have the beginnings of a sense of Kiva as a character, but if Octavion is the other half of this romance, we need lots more about him. His name is only mentioned once here, compared to Kira's and Lydia's 5. Heck, maybe even leave Lydia's name out of P2S1. When Octavion's sister is injured...
...how many ridiculous mistakes did I make up there? Misspelling your MC's name? Thinking it was Kira and not Lydia that had the two spirits?
Sorry. I get so angry when people do that to me--it makes me feel like I wasn't worth taking the time to read closely, so how can they know what they're talking about? I can't believe I just did that to someone else.
Re-reading to find what ELSE I screwed up, I noticed that all of your sentences are very long. Several are run-ons. One (P2S3) is both a run-on and a fragment. Taking all of your clauses, separating them out, and then re-connecting them with logical-connection conjunctions only when they need it might help.
I get this sense, reading the query again, that the "night of terror" you mentioned in the original is actually the scene where everything in this query happens. Lydia's injured (by Octavion?), Kira accepts the Crystor to save her, Kira hits on Octavion while trying not to get killed. When I put it together like that, the idea is kind of cool. Instead of words that I feel like you've put in because you think they sound exciting ("heart of a wild cat," "next victim," "primal instincts," "natural ability," "tough exterior," "tame the beast raging within him," "let her into his heart," "ultimate price"--all of those are cliches), can you tell the story of those three events? That's, like, basically a synopsis right there.
Excellent. You've got it down to the main characters, the chief conflicts, and the big stakes. As Jenny said, you could add some information about the two spirit thing, but you don't have to. This is good. I'd read pages.
This is good, so much better than before. I only have 2 things to point out.
1) Sentence structure. Watch out for run-ons and particularly long sentences. P1 is a single sentence, which is OK, but then P2 follows up with more fat sentences. Vary sentence length and structure. P2S2 needs broken up most of all.
2) You're billing this as romance, so romance is where you need to start and end. I would drop Lydia, focus on Octavion, and just refer to Lydia as "Octavion's sister." I would build more on who the two individuals are and how they become a couple.
With some quick sentence rearrangement and minor changes to name placement, you'd be good to send on this I think. It sounds like a fun read!
Post a Comment