Stella Telleria's Current Query II Critiqued

he Quintessentially Questionable Query Experiment

I got up late today and had the strange sensation of driving to work after the sun was up. Daylight is a strange and fickle companion.

Ahem.

Anyway, let’s get work. Here’s Stella’s revised query, this time with my feedback, in red.

The letter:

Dear Agent,

When badass former Marine, Mia Mitchell, steps into a dark alley to pull a few thugs off their prey, she finds the fight she’s been looking for. I added the been, because otherwise it’s not clear she’s been looking for a fight for some time, and not only that night. The problem is the prey proposes she take up another fight, and a button-click later she awakes on an Earth-like parallel world. Huh? I’m confused. This is vague, and I don’t know exactly what’s going on. These are aliens or people from the parallel world, right? And what does this button belong to? It’s a part of some device? That’s one mad left-hook. This line is still killer, but it unfortunately actually packs less punch now (pun intended). Before, it could be taken both literally and metaphorically, but now that we have more specifics in front of it, it doesn’t have as much double meaning. I’m not saying the specifics aren’t good, because they are (you need more, in fact), but I’m just pointing out how it changes this line a bit.

The scrap leads to a cryptic job offer any sane person would refuse. I’m still undecided on this. The job offer is still vague to me, but you get to it in a moment, and it does set up some great characterization in this next line. So, she takes it. She’s got nothing to lose. Turns out the other side of the rabbit-hole leads to a matriarchal utopia where freedom doesn’t exist, and fighting for it means execution for either gender. Mia finds herself with an underground syndicate of men longing for freedom. She’s been tasked with The impossible job they’ve offered her is training them to fight, but not all agree they need her to show them the way. After all, she’s the enemy. Do you understand why I changed that? I want to see it made perfectly clear that the training and the job offer are the same thing. Otherwise, the vagueness of the job offer gets lost in the shuffle, and an agent might stop reading.

Eben, an ex-slave, is trying to understand Mia’s odd views of freedom. You’ve done a good job of moving this final paragraph a bit more toward Mia’s POV, but you might need to reword it even a little more. He’s also complicating her exit strategy. If she leaves, the power struggle within the syndicate may make their battle for freedom impossible. That Eben doesn’t want her to go only makes things worse for stoic Mia. Haunted by nightmares and post-traumatic stress, unsure who to trust or how to get home, their collective fight for independence becomes her last hope for salvation. But before long, she discovers all is not what it seems. Reality checks never bounce. The rest of this is pretty friggin’ good. That last new line, in particular, is so full of voice, I love it.

THE MALE AMENDMENT is a 115,000 word speculative/romantic novel with series potential and duelling POVs. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Stella Telleria

That’s it.

What do you all think?

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