Marjee Chmiel
Nightmares of Neverwas by Marjee Chmiel
Nothing’s wrong. Go back to sleep.
Soma’s life is nightmares.
Not “a” nightmare. Nightmares in general. They are all she thinks about.
Not her nightmares. Yours and mine. Every living creature, in fact. Soma knows the monsters within us. At night, she tends our monsters as we sleep. In our sleep we see how secretly terrible we can be.
Soma is an aspiring nightmare-writer, and her aspiration seems possible when she learns she is one of only ten humans accepted into The Scholomance —the legendary academy where students learn to compose dreams and delusions, fabricate premonitions, interject déjà vu, conduct mass hysterias, and invent cults and religions.
Her demon professors are brilliant and intimidating. The ancient Professor Skree watched humans evolve from tree-dwelling primates. He writes nightmares that remind us of our ancestral fears: falling from our arboreal homes, being chased by predators. Krasset provides terrifying releases of violence and depravity among criminals and the insane. And Soma’s mentor, Celeste, uses nightmares to shape the inspiration of scientists and artists. Soon Soma develops talents that threaten to revolutionize the field.
As Soma’s success breeds jealousy and pettiness among the faculty and students, she becomes disillusioned with what it means to live the life of the mind. She leaves The Scholomance for the lucrative, shadowy, business. Soma innovates nightmares for a 21st Century, globalized economy where her talents take her to a far darker place.
Wake up. Something’s gone terribly wrong.
Arielle & David: We love the way this pitch starts. There’s something very ominous, spooky and scary about someone telling our hero that nothing is wrong, that they should go back to sleep. It makes us absolutely think that there is something wrong. And we love the way it comes full circle at the end, where someone is telling our heroine to wake up, that something’s gone terribly wrong. And the whole academic environment you take us to is quite fascinating. The professors seem very unique and singular. It’s a well constructed pitch which leads me to believe you can actually write a book that will be suspenseful, deep and fascinating. What can be improved? We keep harping on this, but comparable titles are called for. We need to know what kind of books your story is like. Where does it fit in the bookstore? Also, it kind of peters out at the end. It doesn’t build to a climax. And how these nightmares are used, how they impact the world, is kind of confusing. Obviously you don’t want to give the whole thing away, but right now you don’t give us enough to really understand how this is going to work.
March 6, 2013 @ 2:27 pm
The pitch is intriguing. World she conjures is appealing and mysterious. She starts with the fascinating idea of scripting our nightmares, and dips into the politics and backstabbing of academia. I’ll read it.
March 6, 2013 @ 6:37 pm
This is an amazing concept for a novel–I am so envious of your imagination! The premise hit me like a bag of bricks for how intelligent and original it is. Gosh wow! I also like how, in your descriptions of the professors, you’ve hinted at ways in which this premise will generously engross the reader in feats of imaginative wonder–though all in service of reflecting our own lives back to us (especially, I’m guessing, how our fears make us human). I already feel drawn into this world, and I’d gladly keep reading.
To add to what Arielle and David have said, I also was a little unsure what kind of story to expect, which I think you can clarify through comp titles. For example, does this book take place mostly at the school? Then perhaps The Magicians, or any number of YA titles (is your book YA?). Or is it more about the after-life of the student, in the shadowy business world–like the film Inception? I thought a lot about movies in fact, with both Nightmare on Elm Street and The Cell coming to mind; perhaps those movies are too much “horror” for what you’ve got going on, but I can’t tell. Maybe even a book bridging the gap could be Wicked, which has a section at school in addition to the kind of political undertone you hinted at near the end. I also thought of House of Leaves, if you’re getting at all experimental in how you represent those dreams. And, of course, I thought fondly of Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams, which I personally hope is a text taught at the Scholomance–haha! 😉
Along the same lines, I also wanted to know more about how the language of this pitch added up. For example, are dreams different than delusions? (I imagine they are vastly different for the sake of this novel.) What about the difference between a cult and a religion? (There it seems harder to distinguish for me.) I found myself being particularly picky about your language early on, probably because the beginning felt the most strongly imagined. For example, does she only tend our monsters “at night”? And does it matter to the pitch (i.e. not to the book) that she knows the nightmares of “every living creature”? I think tightening up the language at the start will propel us into the pitch more quickly, and give you room to elaborate more about the shadowy business side of the story. Here’s a possible revision to the opening paragraphs after the italics, earning you ~37 words.
“Soma’s life is nightmares. Not her nightmares. Yours and mine. She knows the monsters within us and lives to show us how terrible we can be.
Soma is one of only ten humans accepted into The Scholomance—the legendary academy where aspiring nightmare-writers learn to compose dreams and delusions, fabricate premonitions, interject déjà vu, conduct mass hysterias, and invent cults and religions.”
Finally, I loved the sentence about Celeste because it gave me a chance to see how nightmares are used in the novel. By contrast, Krasset’s and Skree’s work is merely described, without a function given, which seems lesser. Why does Skree do what he does? Or is it just “art” to him? (In fact, is this a big academic schism within the nightmare community?) This might tell us a little bit about what you mean when you say that Soma will revolutionize the field, because right now I’m unsure if you mean revolutionize the dream content/form or revolutionize the nightmare industry.
Good work–I can’t wait to read it when it comes out! Seriously, get it published! 😀
March 10, 2013 @ 8:33 am
Thank you Rase and Todd for your kind words!
Rase, I’m so appreciative of your thoughts and suggested revisions here and will absolutely take you up on these. I’ve been giving the genre question a lot of thought and you are correct, it will probably be too scary to be YA proper. I think Joe Hill, Neil Gaiman, and Margaret Attwood are good nods towards where I see this fitting onto a book shelf.
Your feedback about what works for Celeste is especially valuable. I’ll revise the two fellows to be parallel in that description. You’ve given me a lot to think about and work on all together, and I can’t say thank you enough 🙂
March 12, 2013 @ 10:30 am
Love. This. Idea.
Kudos to you and what you’ve been able to accomplish in the world of dreams; something we can all relate to on some plane. I would most certainly read this book – not just because I appreciate dreams & imagination but also because I appreciate the clear arc of what could be considered a complex story – [an aspiring nightmare-writer]…[one of only ten humans accepted]…[She leaves The Scholomance for the lucrative, shadowy, business]. *Very intriguing!*
Aside from Arielle/David’s feedback, I feel like your intro could be even stronger w/ the deletion of this phrase [Not “a” nightmare. Nightmares in general. They are all she thinks about.] And lastly, I’m torn about the bit that reads [As Soma’s success breeds jealousy and pettiness among the faculty and students, she becomes disillusioned with what it means to live the life of the mind.] I love where it begins but become confused w/ ‘what it means to live the life of the mind’. …makes me wrestle w/ my interpretation when what I really want is yours.
Thanks for allowing me to blather my appreciation. I truly can’t wait to read this book!