This query is from All-Stars for the novel The Puppet Mistress. Thank you All-Stars for the honour of allowing me to work on and post this!
~~~~~~~
ORIGINAL QUERY
While seventeen-year-old Vaila Grayson is the reigning video game champion, she is overwhelmed by a game with no saves, resets, or continues. Stubbornness won't allow her to walk away and neither will the dimpled smile of her video knight, Sir Cenric Alva. She soon realizes Cenric is not just a collection of pixels, but a real person under a curse.
Unaware he's a pawn in her game, Cenric believes he has fallen victim to a puppet master, an evil magician who controls his movements. This complicates his quest to destroy the Negura, a renegade black magic that threatens to annihilate the magicians of 14th century Spain.
When Vaila's fighting skills fail to deliver against one of the Negura's beasts, Cenric is bitten, but she also cries out when blood dribbles down her arm. Their souls are now intertwined. Emotions and pain alike are shared and death would certainly take them both down.
The guardian of secrets holds the information to defeating the Negura, but finding him will unearth more that just their enemy's weakness. Hidden abilities are rising to the surface in Vaila as she enlists her ingenuity to tackle side quests and terrible monsters. Her greatest challenge, however, is ignoring the sparks igniting between her and Cenric. With the Negura stalking her every move, Vaila has only one chance to stay focused.
"The Puppet Mistress" is a 70,000-word YA fantasy novel with romantic elements, told in alternating points of view. This is the first book in a potential series.
~~~~~~~
GOBLIN-EDIT
Vaila Grayson is a video game champion, but even she feels overwhelmed by a new game with no saves, resets, or continues. Stubbornness won't let her walk away, and neither will the dimpled smile of her video knight, Sir Cenric Alva. It's only when Cenric is injured, and Vaila yelps as her own arm begins to bleed, that she realizes her knight is not just a collection of pixels but a real person under a curse.
Unaware he's a pawn in her game, Cenric believes he has fallen victim to an evil magician who controls his movements and complicates his quest to destroy the Negura, a rogue magical entity that threatens the magicians of 14th century Spain. As Cenric fights both the Negura's beasts and Vaila's control, he doesn't realize his soul is entwined with hers and that his actions are endangering a seventeen-year-old girl.
Using her ingenuity, rapidly-developing skills and broader understanding of the situation, Vaila helps Cenric tackle side-quests and battle monsters. However, her bond with the knight is making it too easy for romantic sparks to ignite, and Vaila must fight this distraction as she steers Cenric toward the information he needs to defeat the Negura--because unlike Cenric, Vaila realizes that if her knight falls, she'll die too.
"The Puppet Mistress" is a 70,000-word YA fantasy, told in alternating points of view, which has series potential. Thank you for your consideration. I look forward to hearing from you.
Have any thoughts about either the original or the re-written query? Please join the discussion in the comment thread!
Also, I'd be delighted if you would please help draw more commenters to the site by mentioning this post to your online friends. Thank you!
What I thought was done well:
ReplyDeletePretty much everything! This was a very strong query already, and it sounds like a fresh, interesting story.
What I thought could be improved:
- It seemed like a word was missing, or something was unclearly worded, in the first description of the Negura, so I called the Negura an "entity" to try to clarify that.
- I thought it was unclear in the second paragraph that Vaila was the puppet master, so I tried to make that fact more explicit.
- The third paragraph lacked oomph, and I think the reason why was that the stakes didn't consistently escalate. What I mean by that is:
In the original query, the escalation of stakes goes as follows:
- Vaila learns a cute stranger is in danger
- Vaila might die
- Vaila is beginning to fall for the stranger
You can see that the last step is of less importance than the second one, i.e. the stakes don't consistently rise.
For that reason, I switched things around so the escalation of stakes in the query progresses more as follows:
- Vaila learns a cute stranger is in danger
- Vaila is at risk of serious injury
- Vaila might die
What I think remains to be improved in the edited query:
In the first paragraph, I'm not sure it makes sense when I said Vaila realizes Cenric is real after her arm gets hurt. That's not a particularly logical conclusion to come to. However, I might also be overly nit-picky on that point; how did it read to you?
Otherwise, I think the rest of the query is serviceable, but that's likely due to the fact that it was a very good query to begin with!
The thing about the arm is that it's very unclear from the original query why exactly Valia realizes Cenric is real. The arm reference is a couple of paragraphs down, and the read I got out of it was more that it ups the stakes because the two are now linked rather than that was the critical event that convinced her Cenric is real.
ReplyDeleteI think the OP really needs to make it very clear immediately how Valia goes from 'just playing a game' to 'woah, this guy's real.' If it's the arm thing, then okay, though I do agree with you that it doesn't seem all that logical (I'm assuming here that the otherwise basic state of the fictional world is that most people don't believe in 'real' magic and are otherwise similar to your standard issue 21st century types).