Thursday, November 15, 2007

Face-Lift 454


Guess the Plot

Stellar

1. Venus decides the world needs enchanted lipstick, so she starts a makeup company: Stellar. But will FDA chief geek Bud Jones ever approve her products? Perhaps he will, once Cupid shoots him.

2. Dig Redden is perfectly happy with his job selling rotting vegetables, so when his family arranges an intervention he's afraid his life will collapse like a dying star--until he meets a stellar woman who teaches him to use a telescope.

3. For as long as anyone can remember, Aunt Marge has been telling jokes about a giant talking iguana that lives in the tree out back. But when she goes missing and Todd flies to Orlando to investigate, he discovers the beast is real. And so is the broken space ship in the barn.

4. Collum Muntz blows his savings on an '89 Hyundai Stellar GXL. But his days earning money on a premium rate chatline and his nights in the garage returning his dream car to factory condition take their mental toll and his relationship with seductive obsessive Stella the Stellar starts to raise questions, both in town and in the Journal of Psychiatric Medicine.

5. Abby Starr meant to give her crush, Robert, a thrill of passion but they had a little misunderstanding about time. When she crept naked into the appointed bedroom it was occupied by the wrong person -- Brenda, the screaming wife. Innovating wildly, Abby quickly declared her love for Brenda and was surprised with a thrill of passion. Should she carry on both affairs, secretly? Or just propose a threesome?

6. Stellar Hooch -- squeezed from the innards of stars, distilled with the essence of comets and smuggled throughout the galaxy in genuine oak barrels by Buck Turgidstan is implicated in the bathtub drowning of four Federation Council members. Now Buck is on the run and only Sister Mary Steubbing can save his neck from the noose.


Original Version

Dear Evil Editor:

Douglass “Dig” Redden doesn’t use drugs and seldom drinks. So why, he wonders, has his wife Molly secretly planned to make him the subject of an “intervention picnic”? [Also, he wonders how it is he's in on the "secret" plans.] He soon finds out as friends and family close in, and over the course of a single week leading up to the event, he is drawn into a bewildering engagement with life. My novel of mainstream fiction, “Stellar” (91,000), though tragic at times, contains a thread of dark humor throughout, similar in style and tone to the work of authors such as Gary Shteyngart and Richard Russo. I believe its themes of adaptation, immigration, and formulating a place in modern society [AKA adaptation] will appeal to a wide audience.

Dig Redden, the man, has decelerated. [The man? Is there another Dig Redden who's a cheetah?] In fact, with both heels burrowing into the details of his life, he has brought it to a wheezing stop. [Presumably this is an attempt to use the idiom "Dig in one's heels," which might literally be applied to a tug of war contest, in which the team being pulled digs in their heels to keep from being moved. I don't think "burrowing" works well, as it suggests actual digging of a hole. Even if we change it to "digging," the important point to know is not what he's digging his heels into, but what force is pulling him where. Also, has his life actually come to a wheezing stop? Do they call him Dig because of the way he digs in his heels? What I'm saying is, I think we can do without that sentence.] His marriage collapsing and career in ruins, his days are now reduced to selling rotting vegetables from a stand along the Delaware River – and he believes he has never been happier. [Fresh vegetables would probably sell better, but hey, if you can sell rotting vegetables, more power to you.] [ Out of curiosity, does a customer shopping at a Rotting Vegetables stand tend to choose the least rotten of the vegetables? Or, having gone there specifically for rotting vegetables, does he thus choose vegetables well on their way to complete rottenness?] But Dig finds that life is not kind to quitters, and the harder he struggles to extract himself from society, the deeper he is drawn in by the cast Molly has assembled. His mentally fading father, Archie, returns, nearly bringing a jetliner crashing down upon his arrival. [I can't get on an airliner with my quart bottle of wart remover, but they let the mentally fading board with shoulder-launched missiles?] Dig finds his [father's] quirks - turning to a retired racehorse for medical advice, a penchant for eating his own hair [He gets his medical advice from Dr. Fager and his hair cut by Barbaro.] - alternately repulsive and heartrending, but ultimately he is affected most by seeing in the man a Dickensian ghost of his own future. His friend and former co-worker, Royce, a man who suspiciously survived the office purge that Dig did not, is willing to help him get back on track. That is, if in return Dig will assist him with a small ‘federal matter’. [This paragraph is longer than some books I've read.] Amidst this turmoil (including several run-ins with the local police), Dig hires a young Princeton astronomy student, Hannah Cho, to instruct him in the use of an expensive telescope that has languished untouched in a corner since the previous Christmas. [Point that end at the sky. Look in this end. That'll be ninety dollars.] He finds himself drawn to the girl, sensing her superior grasp of modern life may be what saves him before his life collapses in upon itself completely like a dying star. While the antagonistic forces of family and friends pull at Dig, he finds his only relief in the time spent with Hannah, discussing the stellar sky as well as their own small worlds. As the two of them struggle to find a path for their respective futures, tragedy unfolds, altering it for both of them.

My first major short story publication, “Copperhead”, is forthcoming in the winter 2007 edition of Rosebud Magazine. I have two additional credits, ["Water Moccasin" and "Black Mamba"] “Under” in July 2005 edition of The City Writers Review, and “Rivers” in the August 2006 issue of You Essays on-line.

I am hard at work on my second novel, a story involving hippopotamus, blueberries, and self-delusion. [Stellar schmellar. I'll buy the hippo book sight-unseen.]

Thank you for you [your] consideration, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,


Notes

It's too long. What can we do without?

1. Gary Shteyngart and Richard Russo

2. Royce

3. The local police

4. Charles Dickens

5. Hippopotamus

That leaves us with our main character, down and out, yet somehow happy. His wife, Molly, arranges an intervention starring his friends and family. He arranges his own intervention starring a college babe, which, against all odds, goes much better than Molly's intervention. Then tragedy strikes, leaving everyone miserable, as required in literary fiction.

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wonder if the author of GTP #4 read this?

Anonymous said...

I guess it's difficult to write a query for Literary fiction without it sounding like a parody of Literary fiction, with its quirky, dysfunctional characters and the Human Condition.

Perhaps there are too many of the "Literary Elements" here, and not enough of the real story. It's described as a novel of immigration and adaptation - I don't see the immigration theme at all in the query, and the adaptation theme is not clear.

Does the story end with tragedy, or did you run out of space - it feels a bit abrupt there at the end.

I think ultimately, less would be more in this query.

Now, I'm off to find a pretty Princeton undergrad: I feel sure the line "I'll give you 50 bucks if you'll help me out with my, ah, telescope" will work for me, too.

writtenwyrdd said...

I think Iago pegged teh problem. Being literary in teh query for a literary work sounds like parody.

I think that EE summed up the query in his final paragraph really well. Why not start with that and rework the letter? This does sound like it's a pretty good story.

Anonymous said...

"One misspelling of "the" is a typo; twice in nine words is a pattern, and I begin to wonder what tha hell's going on."

-- Evil Editor, 8 November, 2007


;)

Xiexie said...

Sounds like a good story, but I got bored in the second paragraph. I think EE and Iago summed it up well the problems there. I'll echo Writtenwyrd's second point

Dave Fragments said...

This sounds like a male menopause or midlife crisis. How many stories out there are middle aged men involved in sexual antics (either real or imagined) with younger women.
And just as despicable as the "Twinky Defense" is the dreaded male ennui. Life is so bad for these fellows because no one ever told them that after 30 it's wrong to blame your mistakes on your parents and the grade school bullies.
A man confronting his own mortality is hardly a story. It's a subplot at best.

oh well...

none said...

The "intervention" sounds suitably horrific.

However. Is there some kind of law that requires all characters in literary fiction whose marriages are in trouble to have an affair?

If so, I'm glad there's another law that excuses me from reading about it.

Anonymous said...

The plot line seemed to lack direction and wandered sort of randomly through a series of egocentric events of not more than about Class I+ peril, which everyone seems to think is good enough for literary, so ok, fine. But who could ever make it through 100,000 words like that paragraph there?

writtenwyrdd said...

Get a life, anonymous. I don't waste my time worrying about other people's typing, neither should you.

Stacia said...

So, let me see if I have this straight:

MC loses job and is losing wife. So he decides to sell rotten vegetables from a booth by the river. This makes him happy, until his father comes along and reminds MC that one day he too will be old and fading, and craziness abounds around them both. So MC learns how to use a telescope and somehow gets re-involved with life? Do I have that right?

I'm sorry, it was about all I was able to absorb. This type of story is not my thing, but based on others like it I've read, it fits. The query simply needs streamlining and fixing.

It sounds like the book has an Ann Tyler-ish quality. People in her books are always doing strange things and surrounding themselves with bizarre characters.

Anonymous said...

Get a life, anonymous.

Jeez, don't be so prickly. It's not about the typing and it's not about you. It's about the coincidence.

Anonymous said...

I'm relatively new here. Is 495 an unlikely number to Evil Editor? Why did we go from 494 to 496? Why is there never a 13th floor when you need one?

Evil Editor said...

Oops. It appeared I'd be skipping Stellar because it didn't have enough fake plots and the next title did, so I numbered them accordingly. But new fakes came in for Stellar just in time. Correction made.

Anonymous said...

The author here. First, I want to thank all for their comments. I've been writing long enough to realize the harshest criticism is more often than not the most useful.

As my query process has progressed for this novel, my "rate" of request has gone down with each attempt to improve it (read: add on and confuse further). The lack of focus has resulted in the (Dave F. put it best) 'just another male ennui, sexcapades story' which it surely is not. But that is my job to get accross, not the readers. Thanks again, especially EE for your swift and sure blade! Back to the drawing board.

Sarah Laurenson said...

I actually got more of the story from reading the posts. SO many people in such a short space and my mind is trying to organize the cast of characters without getting a grasp on the story. There are good suggestions here already.

Perhaps outlining the story arc of the MC will help?

And I, personally, would rather see the comparison to others at the end. Putting it in the middle of describing the story stopped me cold. But I'm also not an editor, so I can't say what editors might like.

Sarah Laurenson said...

Read my comment and I didn't understand what I was referring to so...

'Comparison' is to other writers / novels. You start the query with a line about the story then go off on what the novel is similar to, then go back to the story. I think it shouldn't be broken up like that.

Anonymous said...

They say it's a bad sign for novel structure if you can't write a snappy premise statement for the query. Which is probably true sometimes but not always. Screenwriters are trained to start by writing the premise, novelists are not. It is a skill, so practice helps. If it feels difficult and frustrating, try writing some for guess-the-plot. You'll get better at it.

Anonymous said...

Your query doesn't work very well because it sounds like a "stuff happens to Bob" plot, also referred to as an "and plot" in the Turkey City Lexicon. Your premise statement needs to succinctly convey 4 things: tell us 1] who the main character is, 2] what their main goal is, 3] what their main obstacle to achieving that is, and 4] how they mean to go about resolving things.

I wrote GTP #3, so I'll use it as an example. 1] The main character is Todd. He has a quirky relative, Aunt Marge, but her quirks are not the plot. The inciting incident is her disappearance. So 2] Todd's main goal is to find Marge, hopefully alive. 4] His preferred method for achieving this is to investigate. 3] His main obstacle to success is implied: the activities of malevolent space aliens.

Also implied, and these would be included in the "method for achieving the goal" heading: 4b mere investigation will fail; 4c the talking iguana in the tree will become an important ally; and 4d if Todd really wants to save Aunt Marge, he's eventually going to have to fix that broken space ship and fly it.

Notice this also implies the main character's arc: Todd goes from skeptical average guy to daring dude who thwarts an extraterrestrial invasion, thus saving Aunt Marge and the world.

These implied things could all be spelled out in a more academic description of the premise, but that's not necessary for agents and the result is tedious reading, which is death to queries.

As far as I can tell from your query, your main guy's goal is to 2] keep doing nothing much. 3] He might have to do something because other people want him to. Stuff happens. People are strange. 4] He meets a girl and they hang out with a telescope.

Maybe its because I don't know literary well enough, but I suspect that just sounds too passive to agents to make it out of their slush piles.