[QCrit] Ouroboros- SciFi novel roughly 100k word count. Need Query help, as this is my 4th major revision and it's so hard to tell what's sticking anymore.
Dear Agent,
The year is 3752. Alex has just finished recalibrating the Machine, and she will make her final attempt to reach Victor. It is a laborious process. After all, Victor’s last day on Earth was marked as September 22nd, 2010, nearly eight-hundred years before Alex was born. She knows the moment of his death, down to the minute— but she will need much more than that to pull him into her time. She will need to be precise; she will need to be exact.
Her life is in the balance, and Victor is her last hope at survival. He is a pure biologic: neither part of the connected nor the disconnected. This trait of humanity of old will allow him to reactivate Alex’s network after the Great Solar Flare. Then, with Mother Nature out of the way, Alex will be able to continue her “inoculation” of the disconnected. Individuality will be a thing of the past, and Humanity, as a whole, will continue its evolutionary climb to perfection.
Ouroboros is a sci-fi novel with post-apocalyptic undertones, complete at roughly 100,000 words. It charts the stories of three different characters, from their perspectives, as they converge in one final battle of wits and strength to decide the fate of the human race. With varying outlooks on what it means to be an individual, the burden of loneliness, and what the age of information can ultimately lead to, Ouroboros confronts the imperfections of both technology and humanity, while also maintaining a storyline filled with action-packed twists and turns.
During my time studying psychology at the University of Southern Indiana, we undertook research projects of our choosing and ran statistical analysis on them. I chose to study cellphones and their effect on social interaction. Eventually, an uneasy vision of the world grew in my mind: a future where mankind would be connected on the ultimate level. Ouroboros is the product of that thought.
Sincerely,
Posted Jun 7, 2021, 9:57 PM UTC
Hi! Not a sci-fi writer, but I appreciate the genre. That said, feel free to ignore me.
Ohh I like this. Exciting.
I like this too.
I don't really understand this, but I kinda get it. This suggests that in the future, everyone is connected, and she is looking through time for someone "pure", who is totally human and not with microchips or nanobots or whatever in them.
Ok, with the mention of the great solar flare, I'm a little lost, but I get that this is something that will happen in the future that Alex is from. She needs someone who is "self-contained". I'm guessing the GSF is like a galaxy-wide EMP blast or something, that will shut everything down.
Here, I go, wait, what? OOOH. Is this a plot twist? Alex is like, a robot-supremacist? Is she like the Borg? She only wants things to exist that are part of the collective? Does this mean she'll kill Victor after he re-activates her?
Okay, this is cool, but then you end it and go into your housekeeping. It's frustrating, and not in a good way. Yes, in a query you need to tease, but here you've not given us enough to actually care about what happens to Victor.
I think I need another paragraph, actually. Like, I think you've got a great premise here, but you haven't gotten into the PLOT. You need to show us all the coming conflicts. Something like,
"But when Victor realizes Alex's plans to eradicate every sentient biologic form, he manages to evade her death-bots, and now, scrambling around the jeffries tubes of Alex's ship, he uses his 20th century and decidedly non-logical abilities to trick, cajole, and otherwise guerilla-war himself to Alex's ship's bridge, where he hopes to activate the self-destruct. He is willing to sacrifice himself to save all the biologics of 3752. But Alex, having studied the Die Hard movies of V's time, transports his WIFE from 2010, and uploads her bio-chips into the woman's brain. Gambling that Victor is "all too human", she pretends to be his actual wife. Alex knows he is willing to risk his own life, but is he willing to risk HIS WIFES??!!! ASK FOR A FULL AND FIND OUT, AGENT!!"
You don't need any of this except the genre and wordcount. Maybe include the 3 viewpoints. But the rest of it you should be conveying through the plot itself.
I like your premise! I like Alex as this evil genius but we dont get that she's evil until later on. I like Victor as this important person who doesnt know it. But I NEED to see the comflict. You need to show us Victor arriving in 3752 and give us a hint as how he responds to being kidnapped out of his time and being forced to be this machine's lackey. You gave us a teaser, but no sense of what's actually going to happen in the next 80% of the book. And an agent needs that.
Hope this helped in some way. Good luck!
Phenomenal advice! Thank you. This is what I was missing. It is so challenging to know what a reader can pick up on vs. not in such a short blurb. Also, thank you for pointing out the flaws in the final 2 paragraphs. I have been dragging those over from early drafts and they need to go / be modified a lot. That space would be much better used with some of what you describe: Conflict!