#275

Dear Query Shark,

Blind Trust (fact-based fiction) is complete at 83,000 words.

Right from the start my eyes are rolling. "Fact based fiction" is a HUGE red flag. Limiting your story to what really happened is a choke chain on creativity. If you want to write something factual, it's called narrative non-fiction. If you want to write fiction, don't let facts get in the way. (Of course, you can't make it unbelievable either--that's the art of writing)


There were all those questions from Arthur… damn him and his questions! Life was grand for Ted and Ellen Rivers before their forty year old daughter brought home her latest husband, Arthur Ferguson. Arthur’s ambitious inquisition threatens to upset the family’s blueprint for success. They had more money than they knew what to do with... and they had Max Custer. Ted and Ellen were intoxicated by Max’s astonishing brilliance. He was awash in red carpet clients and espoused that he and his global staff of experts could insure their newly found prosperity would keep the whole family well off for generations to come.

The first two sentences are in the wrong order. Unless we know who Arthur is, the first sentence doesn't make much sense. You're also awash in words here: Ted and Ellen's daughter brings home a new husband who says he can keep them rich for generations to come. Your paragraph has 103 words; my sentence has 20 and is easier to understand.

Arthur dares to challenge the sophisticated professional. He obviously doesn’t appreciate that Max is the expert. Surely, Max must have been an altar boy or maybe even a boy scout before he became an international finance wizard. Arthur claimed to be an accountant, but was for some nebulous reason between jobs. The innocent but colorful lives of Ted and Ellen Rivers are changed forever when Arthur launches his own investigation to expose Max Custer’s skeletons.

At this point I"m too confused to keep reading. I have no idea who the main character is. I have no idea what's at stake. I have no sense of where or when the story takes place.

Countless unsuspecting victims have been similarly duped. A writer friend of mine was also seduced by one of these financial experts. The proceeds from her best seller vanished. Suddenly she was broke. She described it as being mugged, or even T-boned, but was too ashamed to write the story. This eye opening revelation should appeal to a broad audience, because nearly everybody knows somebody that has experienced a similar humiliation.

None of that belongs in a query for a novel.

This is Ted and Ellen’s story; a dramatized version of actual events. I personally researched every intimate detail of the ominous scheme Max hatched. In fact, I was there. Names were changed, but actual documents and much of the ostentatious verbiage and techniques that were used by Max (and his “global staff of experts”) is included. Ted and Ellen were from another generation and had more fight and resilience than anyone expected. While not victorious, they were not entirely defeated either.

It sounds like you're writing an expose here, not a novel. I see this a lot from people (and friends of people) who have been victimized by some scurrilous ne'er do well.

What you're forgetting is that the story must come first. Accuracy in relating events and dialogue is not something I give a whit about in novels. I care about plot and story.

Blind Trust is rife with events and details so bizarre it is sometimes hard to believe they are really true.

You know that truism "truth is stranger than fiction?" There's a reason it's a truism, and this is it. What you don't realize is this is NOT a selling point for a novel. When I read a novel I want to believe it's true, not think it isn't. That's why you get to make stuff up: so it sounds authentic.

I realize this seems odd, particularly to people enamoured of facts and truth, but often the things that sound most authentic and illuminate points of darkness are in fact made up.

After returning from Vietnam, I earned a B.S. in Business Administration and have had an extensive career in corporate and forensic accounting. I have been published in the Birmingham Business Journal, The Smoking Poet and CJ’s Writer’s Blog. I live in Wisconsin with my wife and two dogs in our ongoing 1890 farmhouse restoration.

Thank you for your time and consideration,

This is a mess. Are you sure you read the QueryShark archives?

Who is the main character? What does s/he want? What's keeping him from getting it?
If you are intent on telling this story as a warning to others, you might think about a different form. Murder mysteries are seldom seen as warnings not to be killed.

Dupe novels seldom keep people from being duped.

If you want to write a story using these events as your inspiration, don't stay wedded to the facts. It's fiction, you get to make it all up.