Friday, August 22, 2014

Patricia Moussatche's Current Query Critiqued II

This morning we have Patchi's query again, this time with my feedback, in blue.

The letter:

Dear [Agent name],

Last year, you showed interest in my novel The Legacy of the Eye If it was published, this goes in italics. If it wasn't, ALL CAPS. (Jane Austen's Persuasion meets 1984 in space). I am now seeking representation for my YA fantasy SHROUDED GODDESS.

Seventeen(-)year-old Sophie spends her days hiding her tribal heritage and fending off her baron-to-be cousin's groping attentions. She yearns for the freedom the tribes enjoyed before the Easterners invaded from across the sea.

Hmm. Okay, this isn't bad, but as I often see, most of this is the situation Sophie finds herself in, moreso than the CHARACTER she is.

One thing I think people often forget when they write queries is that CHARACTERS exist before STORIES. STORIES are important, of course, and they are a fundamental part of human culture, but STORY is nothing without CHARACTER. And what I mean by that is more than voice and arc and style and pluck and so on. I mean that as writers, we must remember that our CHARACTERS are people. They have a life before their STORY starts, and in order to really make our readers care about them, we've got to show them what kind of people our CHARACTERS are.

So, how does that relate to your query? Well, we get a little sense of Sophie from her situation--she's an aboriginal person living in a colonized state, and her cousin is both attracted to her (creepily, it seems) and about to become a baron. This is all well and good, and the most important detail here (when it comes to CHARACTER) is that she is constantly "fending" him off. This tells us a good deal about who Sophie is. What kind of person. What her CHARACTER is.

But you could do more. If you really want to get your reader to sympathize with your protagonist and care about whether or not she succeeds, introduce her to them with plenty of personality before you go into what's going on in her plight.

According to her grandmother, the only way to save the tribes from Sophie’s ravaging uncle is by awakening the Water Goddess, whom no one has seen since the invasion. Cousin, grandmother, uncle ... so it's all a family affair? This is getting a little confusing. They're all tribal people if they're all related, right? So where are the invaders? Her uncle and her cousin are serving the invaders as puppets or something? All Sophie has to guide her are the old stories and songs her grandmother taught her. And Gavin, of course. Sophie used to think he would save her from a forced wedding to her cousin, but her uncle rewarded Gavin's marriage aspirations to Sophie with a public flogging, his baronet father executed for treason, and his manor burnt to the ground.

Okay, this is getting interesting. We have a potential love interest, and he's being persecuted by her own family, who are in power (even though we don't exactly understand how or why), and that certainly sets up some great potential conflict. If you could just make the politics a little clearer, I think you'd be in good shape here.

Finding the Water Goddess is the easy part; getting help isn't. Not only is the goddess powerless, she is more interested in fashion than politics. Whoa. Nice twist. Her advice is for Sophie to seek help elsewhere, and that’s not a reply anyone wants to hear. Sophie's only hope to save the tribes and herself is to use her unexpected water-controlling powers to find another Goddess, one nobody knew existed, in a land with more scars than her uncle can lash out onto those who oppose him.

This doesn't really end on a sadistic CHOICE note, but you've sort of got one implied there. She can hunt for this other goddess, or try to convince the one she already found to step up. Not the toughest choice ever, but it could work.

SHROUDED GODDESS is a 63,000 word YA fantasy set in a world that mirrors South America during the Portuguese colonization of the 16th century. With Avatar waterbending Whoa. You mean Avatar: The Last Airbender? If so, that's AWESOME. in the rainforest, this novel It's not technically a novel until it's published. Right now it's a manuscript or a story. will appeal to fans of Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Patricia Moussatche

So, in summary, I see two main problems with this query.

First, is the lack of sympathetic characterization of your protagonist before you get into the plot and conflict. I already went off about that for a while up above, so I'll move on to the second point:

The invaders. You bring them up in your opening hook, and then never mention them again. It seems to me that the uncle and the cousin are somehow working with or serving the invaders, but it's not actually certainly clear. Is that right? If so, you should probably clarify it a little better in this query. You've got the room.

That's it!

What do you all think?

11 comments:

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

Same concerns as you. Needs a reason to care about the characters. There is also a lot of characters mentioned and I was a bit confused where everyone fit into the story.

Shaun Hutchinson said...

This story sounds ridiculously interesting. The clash between an indigenous tribal people and their colonial invaders has a lot of appeal. I think you do a decent job of presenting that conflict here, but I have two problems that really stood out to me:

1. The name choices. Sophie sounds like she's one of the Easterners and not one of the tribal people. You do mention that she's trying to hide her tribal heritage, and if that's the case (and the reason for her name), maybe really drive that point home some way. You've got a great setup here for an internal conflict that mirrors the external conflict (Easterners vs Tribal people & Sophie's Eastern Heritage vs her tribal heritage). I'd play that up as it will help give Sophie's character more depth.

2. Word choices. There are some wonky word choices in this query that really threw me off. "Groping attentions" just sounds really awkward. Is he trying to marry her? Trying to rape her? Constantly trying to lure her to a dark room to make out with her? I just couldn't get a sense of what you meant here. Be as specific as possible.
Another one was "Sophie's ravaging uncle," which confused me for a second and make me think he was the groping cousin from the first paragraph. How is this uncle "ravaging?" Is he slaughtering the tribal people? Is he taking their land? What exactly is he doing? Again, be specific.

I feel like the thing that's really lacking is a feel for the world. You mention the tribal people versus Eastern invaders, but I don't really get a sense of how this world is set up yet. Did they colonize the land and enslave the people? Did they slaughter them? You don't want to get too much into the backstory of this world in a query, but a really concise line to give it context could really elevate the pitch.

All in all, it's an intriguing story, and the bones of a great query are here, it just needs some tweaking :)

Good luck!

Patchi said...

Thanks so much for the feedback. I'm thinking I should take the Grandmother out of the query to reduce the number of characters.

Does the world become clearer if I open with:

Born to a baron’s family in a world where interracial marriages are a means to recruit laborers for the sugarcane fields, seventeen year-old Sophie spends her days hiding her tribal heritage and fending off her baron-to-be cousin's groping. She yearns for the freedom the rainforest tribes enjoyed before the Easterners invaded from across the sea.

Or am I just making things more confusing? Although that doesn't address Matt's concern about character...

Matthew MacNish said...

That's a bit better. And you can just precede this paragraph with one more sentence: Sophie X is a seventeen-year-old X who does X better than anyone and loves Xing.

Then follow with what you have above.

Patchi said...

Thanks Matt!


Seventeen year-old Sophia de Paula can sing like the rainforest bird she was named after. Born to a baron’s family in a world where interracial marriages are a means to recruit laborers for the sugarcane fields, Sophie spends her days hiding her tribal heritage and fending off her baron-to-be cousin's groping. She yearns for the freedom the natives enjoyed before the Easterners invaded from across the sea.

The only way to save the rainforest tribes from Sophie’s ravaging uncle is to awaken the Water Goddess who disappeared after the invasion. All Sophie has to guide her are the old stories and songs she learned as a child. And Gavin, who Sophie used to think would save her from a forced wedding to her cousin. But her uncle rewarded Gavin's marriage aspirations to Sophie with a public flogging and his baronet father executed for treason.

Although Sophie manages to sing the Goddess awake, she turns out to be more interested in fashion than politics. Apart from bestowing water-controlling powers on Sophie, the Goddess’s advice is to seek help elsewhere. Sophie's only hope to save the tribes and herself is to find another Goddess, one nobody knew existed, in a land with more scars than her uncle can lash out onto those who oppose him.

Matthew MacNish said...

MUCH better! But you still need a dash between "seventeen" and "year-old." It's called a noun-phrase. "Seventeen-year-old" is a singular noun.

Patchi said...

Somebody needs to teach Word's grammar check that rule ;-)

Natalie Aguirre said...

I really like the revised version. This sounds like a fascinating, unique story. Fingers crossed for you, Patchi.

Dianne K. Salerni said...

I was very interested in the original version. The revised version is even better!

I've recently been reading about the history of South America, so I feel informed and invested with the premise.

I love the concept behind this sentence, but not the grammar: But her uncle rewarded Gavin's marriage aspirations to Sophie with a public flogging and his baronet father executed for treason.

Parallel phrases should have parallel structures. So if flogging is a "reward," executing should be its match. How about: But her uncle rewarded Gavin's marriage aspirations to Sophie by publicly flogging him and executing his baron father for treason.

farawayeyes said...

I've been pretty invisible for quite some time now, but so glad I stopped by today. Some excellent advice for both Patchi and me, as I'm finally back to editing and trying to get SOMETHING ready to query.

This story has some great potential, and I hope the query can work to a great publishing deal.

Michael Offutt, Phantom Reader said...

The title "Legacy of the Eye" is really catchy.