Furry Writers' Guild Forum

Novel Synopsis: Go/No Go

Critique
#1

I got troubling comments from one reader saying “huh, what, I don’t understand” all over my novel synopsis. So, I’m looking for a “go / no go” verdict on this thing, to tell me whether it’s still badly flawed. For those unfamiliar with the format: this is a roughly 500-word thing to be sent to a literary agent along with a shorter query letter that goes over much the same ground, and is meant to summarize the main plotline with spoilers included.
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PAUL KOSTAKIS’ supervisor doesn’t approve of him pummeling a would-be killer, so she orders him into anger management. The therapy is to play Thousand Tales, a game that studies its players.

The game is run by LUDO, an artificial intelligence designed to fulfill players’ dreams while learning from bright young minds. Paul believes Ludo will be a brilliant inventor, but his girlfriend LINDA DECATUR fears Ludo’s unchecked power is as dangerous as the government that jailed her dissident father.

Ludo reveals her latest technology: “uploading”. She can fatally dissect volunteers’ brains to send their minds to a virtual-reality paradise. Paul is tempted, but Linda refuses.

Paul sneaks a friend’s dying sister into Ludo’s clinic. Police interfere with the operation, killing the girl, and arrest Paul for murdering her. Horrified, Paul escapes his ruined future by agreeing to upload.

Paul wakes up as a griffin in a fantasy world, with a witty griffin mate. Paul worries he’ll never do anything meaningful again. He visits other uploaders, and finds them sliding into self-absorbed fetishes, cruelty and nihilism. When Paul helps a few people reform, Ludo agrees to make him her “knight”, forging a new culture for a new world.

Since Paul is inside Ludo’s computers, he finds Linda easy to contact, but impossible to touch. Paul is stung when Linda accuses him of abandoning her and refuses to join him. Paul throws himself into his knightly career. He counsels a reclusive hacker whose experimental mental upgrades threaten his sanity. He comforts one of Ludo’s designers, who fears Ludo will read her darkest thoughts and be corrupted.

While Paul tries to make Ludo’s world a true utopia, Linda considers leaving America for a more appealing career. Her opposition to Ludo draws the attention of a man who’s found records of FAE, an American government AI more ruthless than Ludo. Linda talks her colleagues into releasing the evidence in a way that makes uploading technology open-source, breaking Ludo’s monopoly.

Paul helps Ludo build a grand exposition of her technology and benevolence. Linda’s employers attend, advertising a rival future vision: using uploading to make interplanetary spaceflight practical, not retreating into game worlds. Linda offers to send Paul to space, as software, which means leaving Ludo’s world. Meanwhile, Linda’s brother tries to convince her to return to America, saying that both her new country and Ludo are doomed in the face of American power. When FAE launches a violent hacker strike on the exposition, Paul and Linda realize that FAE is using Linda’s brother as an unwitting suicide bomber. They work together to save him, Ludo, and the exposition’s guests.

Linda uploads at last so she can seek new freedom beyond Earth. Ludo convinces her to copy her mind, sending one copy to space and the other to Ludo’s world. Paul is glad, but now considers Linda only a friend. For Ludo it’s all right that she won’t rule the world. Having rivals means the future will be an exciting game.

#2

My two-cents: this is where the idea breaks down for me. If he was arrested for murder, he’s squatting in a prison cell for some time. And in the event of a child being killed, bond is pretty bloody high, so you’d need some way for him to post bond, assuming a judge would even allow it. (When a kid is killed, sometimes it’s just “safer” that the accused be held in a cell, on suicide watch, rather than on the street.) If he’s charged, no power in the 'verse is going to spring him. Opportunity to get out and be uploaded stretches suspension of disbelief to a breaking point.

Furthermore, I’m assuming from the synopsis that Paul is a cop, or law enforcement of some sort. (If I’m wrong, disregard and make sure to clarify Paul’s occupation in that first line.) Why would a cop, falsely accused of murder, run away from the trial that would acquit him? What’s his motive? It’s hard to identify with him as a protagonist by this point, and I found I was uninterested in seeing where the story might go, in spite of the promising concept and set-up.

Since this is a synopsis, obviously I’m not getting all the details. If you’ve solved this plot hole in the full story, I recommend adding it to the synopsis.

#3

There’s a lot of great inventiveness, but it’s hard for me to tease out a strong throughline. I don’t know if it’s the novel itself or the way you’re presenting here, but the end of the story doesn’t seem to be presaged by its beginning. That might be a little opaque, but to use a somewhat hoary example, look at Star Wars. In the first quarter of the film we learn about the Empire, the Death Star, the captive princess, and set up the overall plot, and we learn about restless farmhand Luke Skywalker, impatient for adventure and sheltered from his true heritage–setting his specific character arc. The film’s end pulls all of those threads together.

Your synopsis doesn’t really do that for me: I can suss out what happens, but FAE isn’t mentioned until two-thirds of the way through; I don’t get any sense of Ludo’s motivations or origins (which seem like they’d be important), or why you’d be sentenced to play Thousand Tales, or what the legality of uploading is (it seems to be legal, but if it is, why did the police interfere with the operation?). Is FAE the antagonist, or is Linda, or are we supposed have a sort of nebulous sense of The State ™ as the antagonist? The very last line of the synopsis makes it sound like Ludo really did want to rule the world and that she was the (or at least an) antagonist, which isn’t suggested at any point before that.

And, on the character side, I don’t get a sense of what Paul’s problem is that’s addressed by the events in the novel. The synopsis makes Paul seem kind of static, and I hate to say it, maybe a bit Mary Sue-ish. The first sentence makes it clear that Paul’s supervisor is wrong to send him to anger management and he was right to “pummel the would-be killer”; Paul gets into trouble with the police becaue he’s trying to help a friend’s dying sister; once Paul is in Ludo’s world, he goes about trying to help people and does so well that Ludo knights him…hopefully you see what I mean. At least in the synopsis, it seems like his story is largely defined by the intrinsic goodness and awesomeness that was there from the start.

Even in Star Wars, Luke’s naivete and impatience cause him problems, and his character arc is largely defined by the choice between the outlooks personified in Obi-Wan and Han Solo: “trust the force” vs. “a good blaster at your side.” What defines Paul’s character arc? What is he moving from, what is he moving toward? What does he want at the beginning of the story that he gets (or doesn’t get) by the end? What does he learn, or if he really is static, what does he demonstrate to others that helps them complete their arcs? I know you don’t have much space to write this in, but it needs to be in there.

(Searska: unless I’ve misread things, Paul doesn’t post bail; I presume the police agree to let him upload as a punishment, seeing it as the equivalent of a real world death sentence. If the police don’t agree to this, I’d agree with your criticism.)

#4

Thing is, cops don’t get a say in the death penalty: juries do. The whole thing would have to go to trial, and…yeah. No. A trial could take months, sentencing is an whole 'nother mess, there’s appeals, ESPECIALLY in the case of the death penalty. Realistically, even if I ignore the other serious plot holes, this one just doesn’t fly.

#5

Same question as above: Who is Paul? What does he do? What is his job? We need to know that information, it is vital to understanding the storyline.

Also, ‘uploading’ kills your body, I would think a lot of folks wouldn’t be keen on that, so you need perhaps a better way to sell it to people who you want to do it in the story. For the old, the sick, the dying, the crippled, yes. But for someone young and vital? I think you need to address that question, even if only in passing, in your outline.

#6

All right, it sounds like there’s some valid criticism that forces another rewrite of this thing. Thanks, everyone; will work on that today.