
Otherwise, I think you're really getting this thing down.

Oh, and one more thing: I want to read this book!!!

Y’see, here’s the thing about that. In this first novel, Ted is a nobody. Not only is he a slave, he’s a boy as well. Think Everyman or blank slate. Intellectually and morally he’s well beyond his years, but socially he’s as malleable and ingnorant as a much younger child. As a slave and a child, he’s stripped of free will and is literally chased then dragged from one ordeal to the next.polymath wrote:Consider foregrounding Ted's personal stakes more,
Nice query, Watcher!! I think you're getting this down, too.Watcher55 wrote:Dear Mr./Ms Agent,
Ted, like any other intelligent 17-year-old 21st Century boy, should know things – like his name and his past. The gods’ origins lie in an alternate future. There's no transition from Ted to gods here. It makes the description feel jarring. It made more sense in your previous draft.They enslave Ted, and wipe his memory in their effort to add a new Universe to their Interversal Empire. During their voyage into the ancient past, Ted derails the inter-dimensional transport, lands in Nero’s Rome and with the power of Jupiter accidently sets the city aflame. I think this would work better "lands in Nero's Rome and accidentally sets the city aflame with the power of Jupiter." That way you aren't splitting your infinitives...or some sort of grammatical thing like that.
Ted’s 5,000-year-old, fast talking, identical twin Phil is there to greet him, and tasks the amnesiac newcomer with protecting their ancestor, Theodorus from Jupiter. Is there a way to let us know that Phil actually enslaves Ted rather than just putting him to work? He sounds all sweet and happy to see Ted here. At the heart of an inferno that forged reputations and cauterized bloodlines, the nameless slave, who may grow up to be Rome’s most dangerous god, endures a rite of passage that takes him from the Circus Maximus to the edge of the Roman Forum, then to Hades and back. With the help of the gods’ future-born children, the young slave-god must make a name for himself. If he fails to rescue his ancestor and take his place in Rome’s pantheon, Phil will usurp Jupiter’s power and use it to enslave the gods and proclaim himself the ruler of two Universes. Why not the entire Interversal Empire? Since you mentioned that specifically above it made me wonder why Phil would suffice himself with just two.
The Ninth Addict is a 72,500 word science fiction fantasy that will appeal to young adult males. If it'll appeal to young adults you should probably say it's a YA SF/F. And instead of limiting your audience to men, maybe you might want to say that it'll appeal to fans of Douglas Adams and <fill in the blank>. Don't say it's the next HGttG, just let the agent know it has a similar target audience.
Thanks some more.dios4vida wrote:Nice query, Watcher!! I think you're getting this down, too.Watcher55 wrote:Dear Mr./Ms Agent,
Ted, like any other intelligent 17-year-old 21st Century boy, should know things – like his name and his past. The gods’ origins lie in an alternate future. There's no transition from Ted to gods here. It makes the description feel jarring. It made more sense in your previous draft. I agree-changed it backThey enslave Ted, and wipe his memory in their effort to add a new Universe to their Interversal Empire. During their voyage into the ancient past, Ted derails the inter-dimensional transport, lands in Nero’s Rome and with the power of Jupiter accidently sets the city aflame. I think this would work better "lands in Nero's Rome and accidentally sets the city aflame with the power of Jupiter." That way you aren't splitting your infinitives...or some sort of grammatical thing like that. changed
Ted’s 5,000-year-old, fast talking, identical twin Phil is there to greet him, and tasks the amnesiac newcomer with protecting their ancestor, Theodorus from Jupiter. Is there a way to let us know that Phil actually enslaves Ted rather than just putting him to work? He sounds all sweet and happy to see Ted here. At this point Phil is playing the false friend, so I replaced the word "tasks" with "tells him he must".At the heart of an inferno that forged reputations and cauterized bloodlines, the nameless slave, who may grow up to be Rome’s most dangerous god, endures a rite of passage that takes him from the Circus Maximus to the edge of the Roman Forum, then to Hades and back. With the help of the gods’ future-born children, the young slave-god must make a name for himself. If he fails to rescue his ancestor and take his place in Rome’s pantheon, Phil will usurp Jupiter’s power and use it to enslave the gods and proclaim himself the ruler of two Universes. Why not the entire Interversal Empire? Since you mentioned that specifically above it made me wonder why Phil would suffice himself with just two. changed
The Ninth Addict is a 72,500 word science fiction fantasy that will appeal to young adult males. If it'll appeal to young adults you should probably say it's a YA SF/F.It was never intended to be YA, so I wanted to keep that secondary - maybe I'll leave it out because I could just as easily list alternate history or even literary as secondary genres. And instead of limiting your audience to men, maybe you might want to say that it'll appeal to fans of Douglas Adams and <fill in the blank>. Don't say it's the next HGttG, just let the agent know it has a similar target audience.That's doable, and will probably serve better than trying to pin a secondary genre on it.
polymath wrote:I appreciate that Ted is at the whim of gods and mortals who use him as a plaything for their own ends. If he's the protagonist though, at some point early on he should be the most proactive in addressing the main dramatic complication, what his personal goal is as it emerges from a wtf moment to understanding where he fits in the scheme and then what he's going to do about it. Not to say that that is absolutely necessary early in the narrative, only that for the sake of Ted at some point his main personal complication as protagonist and reader surrogate that he's best in first position as the attitude holder and the force of achieving his own destiny.
In essense, Ted's initial complication as I see it is he's a plaything of forces larger than he. Making that complication personal might then have him become less of a plaything and more of a proactive player. Thematically what I see, is something like an individual's relationship to the gods. Like;
"a. The god(s) are benevolent and will reward human beings for overcoming evil and temptation.
b. The gods mock the individual and torture him or her for presuming to be great.
c. The gods are jealous of and constantly thwart human aspiration to power and knowledge.
d. The gods are indifferent toward human beings and let them run their undetermined course.
e. There are no gods in whom people can place their faith or yearning for meaning in the universe (Themes)."
Not A, I'm sure, probably not D, but the others are invoked, perhaps others not listed. So what I really see going on complication-wise is Ted as a pawn between Roman and Greek gods' confrontations. He's a tennis ball handgrenade and the gods are serving perpetual duece. What I mean by foregrounding his personal stakes more is what are his personal goals, motivations, stakes, and complications; his conflict: life or death, acceptance or rejection, triumph or defeat, riches or rags, fame or ignominy, salvation or damnation, and so on, as regards his final personal outcome.
Themes. http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/patten/theme.html
Ah-hah. I see now, the difficulty lies in low-concept premises' difficulty translating into high-concept drama. Ted's sense of morality seems to me a low-concept premise in the making. Translating it into a high-concept premise might come down to seeing it as a tangible situtation analogously representing an intangible social force. Circumstances with primal emotional meaning fit the bill. Fear, anger, sadness, happiness, and disgust are fairly universal emotions with high-concept premise meaning for social beings' circumstances.Watcher55 wrote:I get the question, it’s pinning down a short definitive answer that’s giving me problems, because I have to go with:
f. The gods are forced to respond to individuals (plural because Ted’s not just one guy) because, whether the individuals like it or not, they are on equal if not uncertain footing. Individual relationships with the gods are, in this case, social/political relationships. Incidentally, Ted is forced to respond to the temporal natives in the same way (they can kill him -- sort of).
2. The Individual in Society
a. Society and a person's inner nature are always at war.
b. Social influences determine a person's final destiny.
c. Social influences can only complete inclinations formed by Nature.
d. A person's identity is determined by place in society.
e. In spite of the pressure to be among people, and individual is essentially alone and frightened.
Again:
f. a collision of a-e with b-d arguing fault. The outcome depends on the individual’s set of moral decisions, and responses to those he encounters. Ted makes two key decisions (in a flood of decisions) -- he saves an infant from a mob (his greatest virtue), and he kills another slave (his fatal flaw). So now, his conflict is internal.
If I analyze this any further I’ll have to give away the ending because the god (the allegory) IS the central outcome, and the subject of many stories. I can say that the center of his conflicts are internal and involve all those things agents don’t want to hear about in a query because what’s at stake is Ted’s sense of morality.
Actually I think it's even a rule - changedMattLarkin wrote:Watcher it sounds good. I think in writing numbers less than one hundred it is customary to spell out the number, e.g. "seventeen-year-old."
Isn't it considered risky to compare your work to that of famous authors like J.K. Rowling?
Good luck, your project sounds great.
It can be a bit touchy, I think, but overall I think the really dangerous thing is to say that your book is the next Harry Potter. I don't think most agents get in a bunch about pointing out a similar target audience, especially when the audience spans Hitchhiker's Guide and Harry Potter.Watcher55 wrote:The comparison might come off as a bit pretentious, but the book's about a boy with a destiny who knows less about himself than everyone else does (there's a pretty big twist toward the end though).MattLarkin wrote:Isn't it considered risky to compare your work to that of famous authors like J.K. Rowling?
Good luck, your project sounds great.
Thanks y'alldios4vida wrote:It can be a bit touchy, I think, but overall I think the really dangerous thing is to say that your book is the next Harry Potter. I don't think most agents get in a bunch about pointing out a similar target audience, especially when the audience spans Hitchhiker's Guide and Harry Potter.MattLarkin wrote:Isn't it considered risky to compare your work to that of famous authors like J.K. Rowling?
Good luck, your project sounds great.
You might want to post the question in the Ask Nathan thread, though, just to be sure.
I agree with Matt, though - this book sounds so good!
Great insight polymath. Perhaps something like this?polymath wrote:Tighter, thus better. I'm still concerned Ted's personal dramatic complication isn't quite in the foreground of the query pitch. As near I can determine, I see that as his loss of identity due to loss of memory. Independent self-identity formation is a convention of young adult genre. That's young adult genre's core coming of age plot engine in terms of causation, tension, and antagonism. So that's great. The inciting crisis I see that ties into that is Ted derailing the temporal transport, which causes his identity loss, or in a stronger parlance, causes him an existential crisis. That's also a young adult mainstay. Then he's compelled to act dramatically to rediscover or at least rebuild his identity so he's not without an identity compass.
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