Query summary

[igenlode]

I stumbled across The Query Shark, which is terrifying. (Fortunately I can't even theoretically send a 'query' for critique because I don't have a word-count yet... and suspect that even once I do the automatic answer is 'too long, you need to revise before any agent would consider this for submission'.)

But as a result I wasted an evening trying to devise an 'idea pitch' style summary of Arctic Raoul; one advantage at least is that this is apparently supposed to be a teaser rather than a complete run-down of the plot, so the fact that I have about four acts of action and only have room to mention the start of the first isn't an issue here ;-) (Convincing the agent that there is a lot more plot to justify the remaining hundred thousand or so words would probably require an additional paragraph, I feel...)

Christine Daaé makes choices that change everything.

She chooses to flee Paris at the urging of Raoul, her childhood friend, rather than risking one last performance for the Phantom of the Opera. She chooses to hold the young man to his promise and send him away once she is in safety, rather than accept the love he is eager to press upon her. And she chooses to seek refuge in obscurity at the cost of the talent that has long since begun to frighten her.

Unfortunately the Phantom isn't prepared to give up on her so easily.

Raoul, returning home disconsolate, finds himself the sole target of the Phantom's fury. He would rather die rather than betray the secret of Christine's whereabouts... but when he is shipped off for his own safety to take up naval duties in the far north, he discovers to his horror that his elusive enemy has somehow followed him on board.

The Phantom will never give up until he gets the information he needs... and once by bad luck it slips out, then he doesn't need Raoul any more.

Christine, swept up again in a horror from which she had begun to believe herself secure, fights grimly to survive isolation and captivity at the Phantom's hands. Raoul struggles with sole responsibility for a handful of survivors after the disaster that he has inadvertently brought down upon his ship. And both of them, in the absence of any foreseeable hope, have to come to terms with their feelings for one another.

'Choices that change everything' is my best shot at saying 'this is an AU fan-fiction of 'The Phantom of the Opera', which is of course always going to be a major obstacle in this sort of thing; that needs to go in the putative extra paragraph at the end, as well, along with author bio (years of verbose blogging and fanfic experience probably doesn't count) and other selling points :-(

Comments

[watervole]

The last paragraph doesn't feel quite right to me. I think it's because of the POV shifts.

The other paragraphs read well to me.

[igenlode]

Oh dear -- I thought I was being so elegant in using the last paragraph to indicate that it was a multiple-PoV story without having to spell it out :-(

Ah well, I'm not anywhere within sniffing distance of considering sending in any actual queries at the moment; at an extremely rough guess I'd say that there are at least five more chapters to go (I think it's probably more), which at my current rate of progress means that I shan't even have finished the typing until well into the start of next year, even without any further rewrites...