[940] A Private Nightmare - Query Letter & Synopsis Critique

Hey there,

I STRONGLY suggest you put this on r/pubtips . They are much more qualified to critique query letters than this sub and they critique them day in and day out.

I can critique this for you later because I also critique queries on pubtips, but I did want to let you know that you’ll get more publishing-focused feedback if you put it in the other sub.

I've recently been doing some heavy research for YA query & synopsis expectations, so I might be able to offer a (decently) relevant critique. I'm just gonna go line by line, starting with the query.

A Private Nightmare is set in a private school in the countryside.

This is pretty generic description of the setting and does nothing to catch interest.

Two friends, Marty and Tomas, must fight to survive as the adults around them start dropping dead.

This sounds like your hook. It might be better to prioritize it as your first sentence in the query. This could also be a good place to fit in your setting instead of it being given its own sentence. Specify what/where "around them" is.

I would scrap mention of Tomas and keep the focus on Marty only, as it will help with clarity and he seems more like the main character anyway.

Present tense is what's traditionally used in a query, so you're good there.

Called to an assembly, they are told that their school bully died that morning.

This seems like a backwards step from the previous sentence. Much lower stakes. It also confuses me because I would assume their bully is school-aged, but the previous sentence implies it is only the adults that are dropping dead?

As an ambulance comes to take the body away, the paramedics drop dead, seemingly for no reason.

Here is where you start developing the mystery aspect of the plot and tie into that initial hook about the dead adults. It is interesting, and I think cutting the “seemingly for no reason” bit would make it more immediately intriguing.

Then when the police come to investigate, they too drop dead out of nowhere.

This feels more or less a repeat of the previous sentence. Adults arrive and drop dead for unknown reasons. Does it raise the stakes? If so, how? Could this and the previous sentence be combined into a single succinct sentence to emphasize the bizarreness of the situation?

Marty then runs away only to find the new girl, Morgane.

Is there an emotion or specific action that triggers him to run away? And where is he running to? Just out of the room, or somewhere farther? I at first assumed he was running way far away, but having read the synopsis, he only went outside.

Describing Morgane as “the new girl” was confusing. Is she another student? Is it important that she's new?

Then as they talk they are found by the geography teacher, Ms Cosgrove, only for her to die at their feet.

3 sentences in a row now using the word “then”. To get really nitty-gritty, all 3 instances of “then” could be cut to make the sentences tighter.

Do we need to be given the teachers name? It doesn't seem relevant.

Further panic ensues while Marty, Tomas and Morgane find other students desperate to survive.

Another sentence that leaves me confused.

"Further panic ensures" is extremely vague. What panic?

Why are they desperate to survive? I thought only the adults were dropping dead?

I need to know more about how the students are reacting to all the dead adults to understand their desperation.

Can they escape? Or is this a hell that they can’t run away from?

This part is intriguing, but the rest of the blurb doesn’t back it up. Right now, it just makes me question why they’re trying to escape and what's stopping them from just leaving.

The word count for a Private Nightmare is approximately 27,000 words.

This word count for a novel is a nonstarter. u/Suspicious_Plane7687 is correct that this would, at best, be considered a novella. And traditionally publishing a novella as a debut is going to be a very tricky task. (Also, yes, for YA you should specify the main character's age.)

It’s a fantasy novel with inspiration taken from Hugh Lowry’s Wool and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.

Make it clear this is YA. I'm also not sold on your genre choice. Based on the synopsis, this is more urban fantasy, or maybe paranormal mystery/thriller? I even get dark academia vibes, which is something that's been popular as of late in the YA genre. It might be worth considering a more specific genre choice.

I thought I would explore, for myself, the themes of violence, death, and the cruelty of human nature.

“I thought I would explore, for myself” reads to me as very amateurish and self-indulgent. You can cut this bit and just say “the novel explores” or “the story explores” or “it explores”, etc.

I particularly wanted to write about the cylindrical nature of violence and revenge that I have seen and heard of in Northern Ireland as this type of violence had affected how I live and see the world.

If this was your intention, try fitting these themes into the actual query itself instead of tacking it onto the end here.

I'm also not sure how this specifically relates to Northern Ireland? That seems like a random detail.

Okay, now onto the synopsis.

First paragraph:

This does a good job of setting up the inciting incident. However, I think you can hold off on mentioning James until he becomes relevant later on. Keep the focus on Marty and Tomas.

In general, you don't want to include any frivolous details in the synopsis. Only the most important aspects of the plot that you want the agent to be aware of.

Second paragraph:

Marty finally reaches his breaking point as he flees the scene.

Same problem I had with the query wherein this is too vague to be useful info. What do you mean by "his breaking point"? It would be better to straight up say what action or emotion triggers him to flee.

A heavy fog started to roll through the school grounds.

Firstly, I don't see how the weather is relevant. Secondly, it's in past tense when the rest of the synopsis is in present tense.

new girl called Morgane Dupont

Again I wonder the relevance of her being described as the new girl? Is that something we really need to know? And if she is new, how is she already Tomas' secret girlfriend?

Marty wonders why they are telling him this but they brush past it. 

This seems like a too character-specific detail to include in a synopsis. We don't really need to know Marty's internal thoughts about the Tomas/girlfriend reveal, we just need to know that it happened.

Continued in next comment...

Edit: Misspelled Suspicious_Plane7687's username, apologies

I'd say start at "(age, i.e seventeen-year-olds) Marty and Tomas must fight to survive as the adults around them start dropping dead." That's a much better first query line, and it's also a genre convention that you mention your characters age in a YA query.

But most importantly, 27k is a novella! That's wayyy to short for your average YA book, specially in fantasy. I strongly suggest you either query this as a novella, or work to increase the wordcount to 55k+

I'll approve since it's your first (short) submission. In the future you'll have to up your critique game, though. Check out our guides and also read some other people's crits to see what we're looking for here.