What does the protagonist need to do? (query critique)

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• Nominate Your First Page for a Critique on the Blog
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And, of course, if you need help more urgently or privately, I’m available for edits and consultations!

Now then. Time for the Query Critique. First I’ll present the query without comment, then I’ll offer my thoughts and a redline. If you choose to offer your own thoughts, please be polite. We aim to be positive and helpful.

Random numbers were generated, and thanks to partnerinflight, whose query is below.

Dear {agent}:

The Old Monster, complete at 75k words, is a supernatural thriller with the heart of Fredrik Backman’s A Man called Ove meets Joe Hill’s Heart-Shaped Box.

Isaac, a 93yo WW2 survivor, cannot hear children. It’s a type of selective hearing loss he’s had since the Great War. He considers a blessing. Yet when, following a seizure, Isaac meets Will, a newly orphaned 13yo at the local county hospital, he finds there’s more to his strange affliction than he suspected.

A ghost has been haunting the hospital for many years now, killing male patients via induced heart attacks. The ghost pounces on Isaac, transporting him back to 1941, to a time when he was a partisan fighting the Nazi occupation of Ukraine, and into events leading up to a dark secret Isaac has been suppressing all his life, the murder of his infant daughter when Isaac was 14, and a curse that took children out of his life.

Inexplicably, Will travels alongside Isaac, into a body of an old peasant, a witness to those events. This also allows Isaac to hear the boy, both in the 1941 memories, and in the present. But as the ghost forces the two of them to relive Isaac’s crime, Will gets progressively sicker, leading Isaac to a dreadful realization: if he cannot finally face his traumatic past, the boy whose company he’s come to treasure will die.

Eugene Polonsky lives in Seattle with his wife, two boys, and a floppy-eared non-Beagle. His short stories have appeared in Reed Magazine, Armarolla Magazine, and Kaaterskill Basin Literary Journal.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Summarizing is tricky, and often what writers try to do is to zoom out and capture the essence of what’s happening. This often leads to flat phrases like “face his past” in the last line of the plot description. That’s what Isaac ultimately has to do here, right? He’s facing up to his past.

But… what does that even mean? “Face his past” can mean a whole range of activities, so it doesn’t tell us much about the specifics in this novel. Okay, Will is in the past alongside a mysterious boy, what does he literally need to do in order to set things right or save Will?

Instead of summarizing vaguely and packaging things up in an abstraction, be more specific about what the protagonist actually must do. With the specific quest, we’ll grasp that he’s being forced to face his past.

Here’s my redline:

Dear {agent}:

[Insert personalized tidbit about the agent to show that you researched them individually]

The Old Monster, complete at 75k words, is a supernatural thriller with the heart of Fredrik Backman’s A Man called Ove meets Joe Hill’s Heart-Shaped Box.

Isaac, a 93yo-year-old WW2II survivor, cannot hear children. It’s, a type of selective hearing loss he’s had since the Great War. He considers a blessing. Yet when, but following a seizure, Isaac meets Will, a newly orphaned 13yo-year-old at the local county hospital, he and finds there’s more to his strange affliction than he suspected.

A ghost has been haunting the hospital for many years now, killing male patients via induced heart attacks. The ghost pounces on Isaac, transporting him back to 1941, to a time when he was a partisan fighting the Nazi occupation of Ukraine,, and into events The events leading up to a dark secret Isaac has been suppressing all his life,: the murder of his infant daughter when Isaac was 14, and a curse that took children out of his life. [Extremely convoluted and difficult-to-digest sentence, read the original out loud. Don’t worry about spoilers and be precise about what happened]

Inexplicably, Will travels alongside Isaac, into a the body of an old peasant, a who witnessed to those the events. This also allows Isaac to hear the boy, both in the 1941 memories, and in the present. But aAs the ghost forces the two of them to relive Isaac’s crime, Will gets progressively sicker, leading Isaac to a dreadful realization: if he cannot finally face his traumatic past [Be more precise about what Isaac needs to do. “Face the past” is extremely ambiguous], the boy whose company he’s come to treasure will die.

Eugene Polonsky lives in Seattle with his wife, two boys, and a floppy-eared non-Beagle. His short stories have appeared in Reed Magazine, Armarolla Magazine, and Kaaterskill Basin Literary Journal.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thanks again to partnerinflight!

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Art: Premonition by Henryk Weyssenhoff