Query critique 3/23/23

Offer up your page (or query) for Nathan's critique on the blog.
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Nathan Bransford
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Joined: December 4th, 2009, 11:17 pm
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Query critique 3/23/23

Post by Nathan Bransford » March 20th, 2023, 3:24 pm

Want to see how your editing approach compares to mine?

Below is the query up for critique on the blog on Thursday. Feel free to chime in with comments, create your own redline (please note the "font colour" button above the posting box, which looks like a drop of ink), and otherwise offer feedback. When offering your feedback, please please remember to be polite and constructive. In order to leave a comment you will need to register an account in the Forums, which should be self-explanatory.

I'll be back with my own post on the blog and we'll literally be able to compare notes.

Dear [Agent],

Eighteen-year-old, California girl, Sasha Clems runs along the beach each morning in preparation for competing in cross-country at college and then heads off to the first of four jobs. (Because she will have enough money saved up to have a full college experience). One morning, her run leads her to a beached sea-dragon. With its dying breath, it gives her its magic in the form of a basketball-sized jewel.

The last time this happened, the jewel was auctioned off in the high nine figures. After, that was, a kidnapping, three deaths, and an international manhunt by the magic-handling families. Sasha’s jewel is only the answer to her financial problems if she can hold onto it.

She doesn’t come from a long line of paranoid con-artists for nothing.

Sasha reenacts/videos finding the sea-dragon’s body sans dying-breath-moment. She reports the body to the magic-handlers’ website and posts the video online, using the upload time to pinpoint her location as she ditches her phone just long enough to hide the jewel. Everyone knows the magic-handlers totally have the cell system bugged.

When the magic-handlers show up on her family’s doorstep, she plays them perfectly. So perfectly that the ransacking of her family’s house comes as a complete surprise. As does a way-too-vivid dream of a hot magic-handling boy with dire warnings about other dragons. Then a series of notes begin floating down from her bedroom ceiling; the old guy who found/sold the last dragon jewel wants to help her. (Well, maybe he does…)

An attack on her grandfather and the arrival of a caravan of black government vans make her decide to retrieve the jewel and run for it. The floating notes provide her with GPS coordinates in Newfoundland, Canada, and with no better offers of assistance, she heads northeast. It’s a cross continent race to see if she can make it while still in possession of the sea-dragon’s magic and decide who she’s going to trust along the way. (Good thing she knows how to run.)

Sasha vs. the Whole-Wide-World (and Dragons) is an 85k contemporary YA fantasy. No vampires, werewolves or fated-soulmates included, but an obnoxiously ethical, seriously gorgeous love interest, yes!

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