As others have said, ‘a Belfast biologist running from her own creation’ establishes the scene very well. We know who our protagonist is, what she does, and we can begin to form some intriguing ideas about what her creation is. I don’t mind so much that we don’t know what her creation is, because the setup makes the sense of betrayal (or an experiment backfiring) more interesting. At this point I began to think of this story as a personal one, where something important to this woman is used against her.

From there we lose all sense of direction, though. “Across the real world and into a virtual one” is very generic and sounds almost like an advertisement for a video game. These words on their own don’t carry any interest because there isn’t enough traction on any of them to grab a hold of. Some explanation must be given either of the ‘real’ world or the ‘virtual’ one to continue my excitement from the first part of the summary. Also, which of the two you choose to explain should be an indicator of type of story we’re going to read. Will it be one mostly in the real world or the virtual one? The world your choose to explain will be the one the reader expects to spend the most time in.

Finally, the last part of the sentence continues to use vague description and loses my interest because it’s just so generic. “A strange power wrestles for control of her life” is such a played statement these days because it can apply to almost anything. My infant son has a strange power that wrestles for control of my life, for example. But it’s not something most people would be interested in reading about.

Give us some meat to chew on and you’ll find people’s interest growing. Don’t worry about alienating audiences with a genre story, worry about attracting the attention of the people who have read a hundred novels in that genre.

(I intentionally have not read Grace’s explanation of what her story is about when forming the above opinions because I think its important to view this as an outside person (such as an agent or editor) looking in.)

Oh yes, now I have read Grace’s comment.

I got stuck at the word ’strange’ like everybody else. The storyline is, of course, brilliantly done, bringing in three characters and settings into one sentence.

And from creation, I thought a monster or something. The thing is there are too many such movies floating around; people creating monsters and running from them, strange powers manipulating the life of the protagonist. This storyline reminded me of three movies I saw. A little more accuracy maybe will cement it.

Her story was nothing like what I expected. Running from her creation made it sound like a living entity–very misleading.

I don’t think she placed her story firmly into any particular time/genre. It could be future, Frankenstein-good vs evil-past, today or tomorrow. It could be sci fi, speculative fiction, horror, even religeous.

Also, she did not define the ’strange power’ enough to give us direction. Is it alien, evil, angelic, destiny, Sky Net?

So overall, when she’s doing her booksigning and someone asks, “What’s the book about?” She’s going to have to spend even more time explaining herself while potential sales get away.

I know who the protagonist is (a Belfast Biologist). I also know her goal (to flee from her own creation). I know what is at stake (her life). What I do not know is her motivation, why is she fleeing and what is the “strange power” trying to control her? Add this to your tag line and you have a winner.

If you could end world hunger, you’d do it, right? What if governmental experiments caused your miracle fertilizer to become a weapon of mass destruction? Meet Naomi, the Belfast biologist forced to run from her own creation–across the real world and into a virtual one. But there, a strange power wrestles for control of her life.

The ’strange power’ is in fact a friend of hers who programmed the virtual reality and defined parameters for her virtual existence, but that’s not supposed to be revealed until Naomi finds out for herself near the end. So it’s not really a threat but seems so to her because she’s continually forced by this unseen well-meaning friend to do things she doesn’t want to.

But how to get all of that into one sentence without giving too much away…??

This storyline is a good start, just needs a little work. As many have already said why does this biologist have to run from her own creation. Was this creation breaking laws or rules of the people she works for? Was this creation accidental?

I think it is a good start but I am thrown off by the last part were you jump to a strange power wrestles for control of her life. What does this have to do with her creation? Does this power after her creation and need her to control it? It seems just thrown in and I am not seeing anything that makes it important to the beginnng of the setence. It could be very important but I don’t see that based on this sentence.